AFH UPDATE (November 2019)

On November 18 I crossed a threshold, with respect to 4D theory. I realized what is wrong about the question, “What is the Fourth Dimension?” The issue is definition, the solution is indefinite. There is no such thing as THE 4th Dimension. A fourth dimension can be introduced to practically any 3D (or less than 4D) formulation. One can deploy 4D for a host of reasons or functions. 4D serves basically as an X Factor for solving imaginary problems with actual implications. [CONTEXT: Research centered on two primary sources (James Bridle and Buckminster Fuller) and multiple secondary sources (Joe Rogan interviews with Malcolm Gladwell, Ed Snowden and others…

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #49
4D Quantities Series #11 [Meta-Elements (Array)]
Vinyl on Canvas
40" x 30"
$3850

A 4th dimension can be introduced to a calculation as a means for representing Time, but 4D is not TIME itself, and certainly not only Time. A fourth dimension could be 'weight’ in a height x width x depth description of an object. The 4D feature could be location in a name x race x gender description of a person. [ ^ Referential notations > The Soto exhibit at Guggenheim Bilbao; Exposing the Invisible; CAA Journal Editor’s Note “Materiality, Sign of the Times”…

Nets, Meta-Element + Wovenform Series, Number 8
Currents, Flow and Reproduction #35
Vinyl, Ink + Acrylic on Museum Board
40" x 31"
$2100

We add fourth dimensions to all kinds of concepts and constructs all the time. It’s helpful to recall that dimension is rooted in the idea of measurement. Things get tricky when we start to try to measure “things” like space, or energy, or time, and even trickier when we try to measure spirit, experience and perception like things. { ^ Externalities > The Venice Biennale closed due to “second-worst flood ever recorded.” Other major stories include: the percolating China-USA trade war; continuing unrest in many nations; the controversial entrance of Michael Bloomberg into the Democratic primaries; Trump impeachment; British Royal Prince Andrew swept away in post-Epstein-murder scandal…

l"The Cycle of Completion [Study]"
Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #51
Ink, vinyl paint, mixed media on museum board
40" x 31"
$2100

Blame Latin, and that confounded res. [ ^ Echoes > Descartes’ res extensa and res cogitans; obviously res publica; in media res ~ a device that continues to inform creative narrative as an immersive time-flattening technique; philosophical conduits thread through Aristotelian Truth, and, indeed, a plethora of objective traditions’ conceptual superimpositions…

"Meta-Elements #11"
Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #52
Vinyl paint, mixed media on museum board
29" x 20"
$1850

It would not be incorrect to think of 4D as a catch-all dimension, nor would it be false to say that 4D is an additive space for merging properties into complex structures. It would be near impossible to say anything false about 4D, given that the dimension can serve as a transitional container for projection.

"Meta-Elements #12"
Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #52
Vinyl paint, mixed media on museum board
29" x 20"
$1850

A fourth dimension facilitates expansion from our concept of THE strictly material or abstract universe into one that is more realistic in its proportions.

l"Meta-Elements #13"
Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #54
Vinyl paint, mixed media on museum board
29" x 20"
$1850

Since the early 1980s, I have identified as a 4D artist. I have been asked hundreds, if not thousands of times, “What is 4D?”

"Meta-Elements #14"
Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #55
Vinyl paint, mixed media on museum board
29.5" x 19"
$1850

The reduction of the proposition of four dimensions for universal theory and applications to Time has clearly proved insufficient. Human enterprise and perceptual evolution has generated a tremendous variety of complex situations. A functional idea of a 4th Dimension facilitates development and innovation in all directions, across disciplines and within social sectors. 4D has compelling implications for the individual, too.

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #56
4D Quantities Series #11 [Meta-Elements (Array)]
Vinyl on Canvas
54" x 41"
$6850

My primary interest in 4D is artistic. In pursuing an improved understanding of the 4th Dimension, I have found common cause with a broad range of practitioners whose primary interests are not art. Yet, through collaboration and discourse, we have discovered that 4D has qualities that are valuable in multiple enterprises. An important by-product of these 4D exchanges has consistently been an enhanced appreciation of one’s collaborator, his discipline and thinking. Further, by working and thinking together, in an era of shared technology, we now find ourselves using many of the same 4D tools for visualization, communication and production.

AFH UPDATE [October 2019]

An Oregon Year

We conclude our first cycle of seasons in Astoria. I can offer some impressions, many of which I have sifted through over the past twelve months in the AFH Blog, in conversations with new and old friends, and through the network of communications I have have developed and maintained for that purpose for decades. The Northwest Coast of the United States is astounding in its beauty. The natural power of the region can be restorative and destructive by turns. The Pacific, the Columbia and the mountainous forest land contain wildlife that even yet thrives. Many of the inhabitants remain connected to the environment for survival, and some people yet prosper from the fruits of Creation. Farming, fishing, hunting, trapping and such persist not only as past-time, but in material real time, as the primary source of sustaining life and life-way. This fact shapes and informs what else drives Oregonian economy, politics, culture. Education here contains the memory of bust-boom industrial cycles for logging, gill-netting and game-based commerce, with more than the past in mind. The history of Oregon is unfolding, and as such the imagination spans change stretching to the time of exclusively indigenous human habitation. Teaching encompasses maritime occupations, weaponry and tasks associated with pioneering. The topology of the imagination is connected to both man-made and geological landmarks (although it should be noted that some of area’s most compelling features are fluid). In Astoria, the bridges and the Column pronounce local identity, but so do the ships that come and go daily. Just offshore, the whales migrate north and south through often dangerously stormy seas. This section of Oregon is linked to the rest of the world by its furtive waters, and their navigators. Alaska seems to hover in the consciousness, not only as a wild frontier, but as an affirmation of intense will. That other state is within reach, on the horizon, and it contains stories that can veer into epic territory with not too much exaggeration. The bloodlines of people in these parts are in unusual measure active. The ties among the folk can be counted in generations, but also described in tales of migration and settling. The Old and New Country exist simultaneously for many, and this is true for everyone now, due to contemporary conditions as much as colonial and post-colonial ones. The Internet has impacted the Pacific Northwest like everywhere else, but added elements pertain to the proximity of Redland, Cupertino, Silicon Valley and the Western tech hubs. Likewise the strategic value of the place is reflected in military presence, as old as America herself. The complex proposition of ownership, of laws of property, thread through all facets of this society. While the same can be said about most of the world at this point, the transparency of the matrix of owned things is colored by the issue of space. Possession is more visible. The homeless and destitute are not well hidden, and marginally integrate within fairly stable systems. The hallmarks of American democracy, local to federal, are expressed in the community, but so are the profound externalities that function to subvert democracy in all directions. It follows then that Astoria and other Northwest Coastal localities offer some of the best kind of democratic arts and culture, in both individual and collective forms. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the demographics and statistical logic create a profile for the typical NWC personhood that is very different than the one we abandoned in Bushwick. For me, this is a significant divergence, but no more than the experiential shift associated with population density, technological compression, wealth consolidation and other such factors. I continue to process the perception of such phenomena, including art itself, from a distance that I would not necessarily call “safe.”

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #46
4D Quantities Series #9
Vinyl on Wood
15.5" x 11"
$1850

4D-SCAN

As the leaves changed color for Autumn, I pursued a plenitude of leads, trying to assemble a narrative to account for what is happening. What follows is a summary of my findings. Think of my mission as a foray into the cave of wonder, a subterranean labyrinth to wander. I pause at seams that sparkle and shine, if only for an instant in the glow of my torch. Some of these veins contain nuggets of wisdom and insight into the dreams of the world above. There live monsters who lurk in the shadows, down convoluted tunnels, but I look upon them, too. I may stop and fashion a fire, illuminating markings on the walls and ceilings of the underground maze. I have been preceded. I scrawl notes to read in the light of the Sun. After a while I return to the surface, emerging a different man than he who entered the portal to the nether regions of this land. …So, yes, I watched the Hobbit again (with my son, who is seven), but I also watched The Joker, which is very informative, differently. I noticed the potent efforts to suppress access to any clip that captures the madcap, Dionysian bliss performed by Joaquin Phoenix costumed in the villain’s role in his post-transformation dance down New York City stone steps, bewildered detectives close behind. The descent into a swirl of masked violence, through a sequence of chaotic, murderous acts and events, unfold in a terrifying sequence. The unspeakable, undo-able are demonstrated. The rich are gunned down in alleyways. Rioters gain the upper hand on police. A television personality’s brains are blown through the back of his skull with the aid of a sidearm wielded by a lunatic on live TV. The soundtrack is excellent! In the next several days consequent to the massively successful opening of the film in US theaters, the punditry expresses horror and outrage at the scene. The jailed pedophile Gary Glitter is publicly pilloried again, to make a smart association between the rock’n’roll attraction of Phoenix’s Joker’s transgressions and child abuse, amplified by the false story that Glitter will be enriched by the popularity of the movie, and the excellent use of Glitter’s ubiquitous anthem in it. Almost no easy replay version of the clip can be found on the web, which is impossible, and implausible, given that millions of users are clamoring to see for themselves what all the buzz is about. Waves of negative press wash over the meme phenomenon generated by the Joker dance. Nothing works to derail this mediatic runaway train. The times they are a-changin’. What else? Mr. Robot is back, and Season Four is perfectly timed. I view the first several episodes excitedly. The NBA and South Park versus China plays out in the media-verse, accidentally rupturing the slow-crawl effusion of Sino-censorship, which threatens free speech in the West, primarily through the complicity of corporate industrial “culture” and the cowardice of corrupt politicians. Remember when representation of the Prophet Muhammad struck terror in the hearts of the editorial class, due to terrorist reprisals? Those days seem quaint in comparison. Isn’t America waging economic war with China? Are you with us, or against us, Apple? The squirm among the globalist oligarch class is intensifying, in large measure because of the rise of Elizabeth Warren, and the heroic refusal of Bernie Sanders to disappear, or die by heart attack, or at least come to his senses and capitulate to the “moderate” branch of the Democratic party and their syndicate owners. No, Bernie crushes through his heart attack, gains the sanction of AOC and the so-called Squad (this election’s version of Bernie Bros) and comes out killin’ it in NYC in front of a Yuge crowd of “fans.” Leon Cooperman uses dirty words on CNBC to decry the animus against billionaires, undermined by the fact he is one. Warren approves of his message, that the super-rich are afraid of Warren. Cooperman claims Wall Street will shut down if she or Bern are elected President. Isn’t such talk seditious, treasonous? Whose team are you on, Cooperman?! I tried to watch the star-studded Netflix movie The Laundromat, but discovered the Big Short cinemagraphic approach to the story insufficient. I recommend the reader consume the narrative in its native formats, which are in actuality far more compelling. A concerned citizen might question why so little has been done by the world’s legislative and police bodies to shut down the tax evasion industrial complex. When will the Queen, Bono, all the dope cartels, oligarch class and their heirs and spouses, etc. be brought to heel for their wanton racketeering criminality? Certainly the enforcement authorities and their armies are prodigiously capable of taking anyone in the world down. Why not point the Big Guns of Justice at those who are, contrary to Cooperman’s assertions, the planet’s most accomplished and dangerous outlaws? Yes, I do keep up with the Impeachment proceedings. How can one not? The enormity of the implications for Americans are only challenged by the small potatoes nothing burger content propelling the campaign to unseat the POTUS. All of it is so corrupt and brazen, which is indicative of Washington, D.C., the federal government, being run like a business, for business, by business people. Deals are being made. In Syria, Ukraine, with Iraq-Iran-Israel-Afghanistan-Saudi Arabia-Yemen-Lebanon-Qatar-UAE-Turkey, they are wheelin’n’dealin’, and blood flows like wine at a wedding! In other news: Brexit is a case study in globalist, anti-democratic stall tactical proficiency (see the Clash, greatest hit); Hong Kong is fighting in the streets (no, not going to mention Sir Elton); so is Chile; so is Barcelona; and Haiti. Argentina and Brazil did their rioting over the summer. Mexico just averted war with El Chapo’s cartel. The Yellow Vest movement has receded, but can we just give those French populists a shout-out? What a run! I wouldn’t even know where to begin in cataloguing the protest movements everywhere. HERE is CNN’s take on it, LoL, which points a finger at INEQUALITY, an analysis that is about as profound as those that point the finger at big abstractions, like ECONOMY, or THE WEATHER. OK, but, returning to the corporate media matrix and policy, I am intently monitoring the cooperative, collective measures used to ensure that Bernie Sanders would never be elected President of the US. This IS a conspiracy, but we knew that in 2016, and learned much about the mechanics of the MSM collaboration with DNC and the Candidate Clinton machine in the aftermath of the campaign. Today, that bit of inglorious history has been whitewashed to death. How can any unbiased observer not recognize that the Dem Primary field was inundated with unelectable challengers selected specifically by handlers to diminish the prohibitive front runner, Mr. Sanders? The blatant cynicism of the strategy and tactics is flat-out un-American! Remember, we are an optimistic, naive nation. Sure, the accusations that the USA is a greedy and violent empire, like all those others we rebelled against or rejected or fought wars with, resonate, but only if you are willing to ignore the intentional conflation of America, as such, and the predatory class that live gloriously on our country’s teats, and have done so practically from our nation’s founding. The general worry right now (as ever) is that a permanent abolition of the GLOBAL, RICH, POWERFUL, REPRODUCTIVE CLASS is in the works, and will finally, this time, come to pass. Well, speaking for myself, I am waiting for the English translation (from the French, speaking of two of modernity’s big empires, now significantly reduced) of Thomas Piketty’s new book, a sequel to Capital in the Twenty-First Century, slated to be out in the Spring, for maximum impact on the 2020 US elections. It is, in the meantime, very gratifying to note that the evil bastard Larry Summers is vilifying research by Piketty associates, and evidently, that Michael Bloomberg and Ms. Clinton and Mrs. Obama are contemplating late-term entry to the competition for the Presidency, to be, lest we forget, THE MOST POWERFUL PERSON ON THE PLANET EARTH (harhar).

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #45
4D Quantities Series #8
Vinyl on Canvas
12" x 9"
$1050

Then it came to my attention that Mark Zuckerberg, the unimaginably wealthy CEO of Facebook, has embarked on a new venture: the establishment of a virtual currency, the Libra. This author is no economist, but it seems to me that Libra poses an existential threat not only to the power of the purse of the US Department of the Treasury and the mob at the Federal Reserve, intricately networked with the global financial syndicates. Zuckerberg is in plain sight lobbying to usurp and centralize commerce within the auspices of his social media mega-company, amidst a swirl of prohibitive movements to curtail the all-directional influence of Facebook and the super-rich class to which Mark belongs. Conveniently for Zuckerberg and other ne’er-do-wells engaged in white-collar hooliganism, the surviving, ever-consolidating press in nearly its entirety is quietly converting to a model that affords the citizen - desirous of informatic democracy - to submit to a few free articles per month before acquiring a low-cost subscription to his preferred news outlets. Behind the darkly tinted glass of the current media topography, operations of vast import are kept from the people most impacted by them. Who is investigating the deals being done to save Big Pharma from its opioid comeuppance, or the latest scandals of the cheaters in the banking and trader industries? Who is tracking the geopolitical aspirations and machinations of our furtive enemies, and the proxy wars they engender, to more than a cursory or hackneyed extent? The stories we are fed by talking heads become more confounding by the minute. Is Tulsi Gabbard, as not-quite-out-to-pasture Hillary claims, in fact a RUSSIAN ASSET, or an ASSAD ASSET? The assertion is nonsensical on its face. Gabbard is a lovely war veteran, National Guard Captain, US Representative from Hawaii and Presidential candidate! Yet, heavy consideration of Clinton’s libelous claim is echoed by warmongering public, commercial and private agents appearing across the media spectrum. Simultaneously, Bernie’s platform for revolutionary displacement, even erasure, of the status quo for systemic inequality is buried or ignored, even though substantial majorities of constituents support them. Americans want public education, from kindergarten through four-year university. Americans want to tax billionaires out of existence, through progressive wealth and income tax provisions. Americans want public health care, Medicare for all. Americans want a living wage for meaningful work, which entails the development of domestic manufacturing, the end of off-shoring and outsourcing, and the reversal of coordinated efforts by industry titans to disenfranchise this country’s labor force. Despite decades of pro-Capital propaganda, America wants collective bargaining, the right to strike, stronger unions. America wants the profit incentive to be removed from the prison system, the health care system, the education system, the military. America wants neo-liberal and -conservative privatization and de-regulation to end. America wants racial and gender equality. America believes in the Constitutionnal separation of Church and State. America has no King or Queen, and does not want a neo-aristocracy. America wants a prosperous middle class. America wants judicial equality for all citizens, that we be all accountable under the same set of laws. America wants by and large the de-criminalization of daily life, including the stuff that earlier regimes defined as vice, and re-criminalization of bad business practice and political malfeasance. Americans want money out of politics. Americans want a new Fairness Doctrine for media. Americans want to nationalize communications and media, and the re-implementation of Net Neutrality. Americans want to democratize technology. Americans want equal economic, social and personal opportunity for all. Americans want clean energy. Americans want an end to polluting industries. Americans want a cohesive, comprehensive approach to Climate Change. Americans want respect and resources for science and teaching. Americans want to rein in the the out-of-control, criminal financial sector, by extreme means, if necessary. Americans want fair trade. Americans want alliances with nations that align in word and deed with our Constitutional, representative democracy. America wants their political representatives to represent all Americans, not just the rich and powerful. America wants healthy food, which involves a wholesale reconfiguration of the ranching, farming and food delivery industries. Americans want a healthy environment and want to preserve the natural beauty of this country, which points to expansion of parks and monuments across the land. America wants a strong military and police to protect the citizenry and the nation itself. America wants not to be spied on by a tech-enabled spook industrial complex. America wants its art to represent our vision of the world, not the narcisstic interests of oligarchs or the monopolistic programming of international corporate culture syndicates. Americans want their children to do better than the previous generation. Americans want an end to global economic and military interventionism on behalf of the Davos set and their minions. Americans want an end to the practice of predatory globalism. It may sound pie-in-the-sky, but Americans want to be friends with people everywhere, if possible. Americans want real local-to-global community, which requires the maintenance of bottom-to-top infrastructure, material and social. Americans want an end to a few people who derive the great proportion of their wealth and power by exploiting everyone not among the wealthiest and most powerful, and everything that can be bought and sold, no matter the cost. Americans want quality of life, and the end of Austerity in all its malicious manifestations. Americans fought and died to end slavery, and want a living wage now - because wage slavery is still slavery. Americans cannot abide torture and war crimes, and we want those who committed or commit it in our names to be brought to justice for war crimes. Americans want an end to war profiteering, specifically, and enrichment from misery in general. Americans want the financial sector to pay for what they have done, and continue to do, to maim and brutalize the American Dream. Americans want freedom, more than ever. Americans want our vision, our imagination, our MOJO - back. It was stolen by evildoers. We don’t want them to get away with it any more.

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #44
4D Quantities Series #7
Vinyl on Canvas
14" x 10"
$1200

When I write a paragraph like the one above, I tend to think of men like my Uncle Bob, who inspire unequivocal feelings like gratitude, respect and patriotism. In my research I am often drawn to people who stand for substance in the range of the unequivocal, people like Scandinavian teen phenom Greta Thunberg, whose meteoric rise to international prominence has caused trepidation for those whose positions and possessions depend inordinately on the domination and debasement of Nature through a host of exploitation/extraction schemes and regimes. In this context, one may celebrate the demise of arch-villain David Koch, also noting the pussyfooting by all parties still indentured to the Koch empire in hailing his shedding the old mortal coil. I remain elevated to a degree, by a modicum of hopefulness for a different future, based on study of possible outcomes in 4D modeling. Time grants 4D perspective, and types of language permit us to suspend content in visionary spatial context for analysis. In October, I revisited all the classic interviews of Malachi Martin by Art Bell, plus (bonus) appearances by Dr./Fr. Martin on Firing Line with William F. Buckley. I took in a bunch of Joe Rogan podcasts, in whole or part, including new conversations with atheist Richard Dawkins, Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer, retired boxer Evander Holyfield and about a dozen others, as well as a bunch of samples from the JRE archive. I took in the latest episodes of the ArtFight podcast out of Nashville, too. More: Richard Tuttle speaking and performance reading at ICA; the hilarious Irish horror film Extra Ordinary; the KILI interview with Arvol Lookinghorse (who met with Greta T), in which Arvol explained his motivations for sequestering the Sacred Pipe Bundle for four years; accounts of NY MoMA’s re-opening, which deserves, even requires, in-depth consideration, which I will get to elsewhere; the profound lectures by Alexander Galloway on the Virtual and Analog, and others; the lecture by Friedrich Kittler I attended in 2010 at EGS on Turing and Shannon; a breakdown in Bloomberg with data visualization of the biggest landowners in America; the Neuromancer by William Gibson; For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign by Jean Baudrillard; The Sublime Object of Ideology by Slavoj Zizek; Recodings | Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics by Hal Foster; Cybernetics for the Twenty-First Century: An Interview with Philosopher Yuk Hui by Geert Lovink; a Bruce Sterling account of Burning Man (1996)… My routine compendium rotates coverage among diverse sources: the UFC, including fights and news, especially at MMAJunkie; college football, with particular attention on several teams (Notre Dame, West Virginia, now Oregon, and even USC, Tennessee, Texas); pro boxing and basketball (Golden State); Matt Taibbi; the art world, from many angles, with news gleaned from Artforum, ArtNews, The Art Newspaper, HyperAllergic (although I am increasingly disenfranchised by its editorial bias) and especially the reviews by Joseph Nechvatal, artnet News, particularly Ben Davis, but also others there; e-flux; Politico; WaPo; NY Times; Salon; Daily Caller; The Guardian; Bloomberg; Forbes; LA Times and Weekly; New Republic; FAIR; The Atlantic; NY Magazine; the New Yorker; Austin Statesman and Chronicle; Nashvillian and Nashville Scene… I receive dozens of email invitations to exhibitions around the world every week. One caught my eye this month - William Powhida’s “Complicities” at Postmasters in NYC, a show that ought to be assessed in conjunction with Guardian article linked below… Periodically I visit VICE, Vanity Fair, Slate, sundry entertainment journals, usually for verification. In October, I read dozens of articles consisting of stunning revelations, and didn’t have to venture into the tabloids to do so, although some stories did involve aliens and Area 51. Donald Trump’s attorney claims the POTUS in fact could commit murder on 5th Avenue and not be prosecuted for it! POTUS called House Speaker Pelosi bad names! Quid pro quo is a business-as-usual component of US foreign policy, and utilizing QPQ diplomacy to dredge muck on domestic political opposition is cool, so argues that red-handed apparatchik Mulvaney! Let’s have the G7 meet at my Doral resort (POTUS)! Backlash. Phony Emoluments clause! Traitors! This Presidency is costing me Billions! …Such clangorous upheavals blur the borders of democracy, yes, and they dissolve other vital news pieces, as if by some dark media sorcery. Jeffrey Epstein’s supposed suicide in prison? Gone from the newsroom almost overnight. What of the Global Elite intertwined in his pedophiliac sex network? Nothing and no one to see here (ahem, Prince Andrew, Bills Clinton and Gates, Woody Allen, et al.). What about the Bahamas, or Puerto Rico, or any of the many principalities devastated by natural disaster (erm, climate change)? Extinctions (and the city-clogging protest movement)? Move along. Even Trump’s Wall spins in and out of focus, contingent on the latest episode of chaos in the Trumpisphere. And what about so-called non-critical infrastructure? Or even the critical kind? And the legislative work necessary to conceive and execute it? I will, with admittedly less frequency in the past few years, indulge in Utopian prospects. Obviously, there is no room at all to consider nationalizing America’s museums, but why not at least float the idea! According to the click-driven mediation classes, folks just don’t have bandwidth for it. Radical awareness is shifting into neutral at exactly the wrong moment. What used to be the party-line, that information consumers were warped by the web-borne barrage of TMI, that our attention spans were decelerating at an alarming pace, because of the flawed delivery systems of contemporary media and communications technology, has given way to the admonishment that we are fatigued by all the weird bad newstuff pounding our reality relentlessly (Trumpism). What is regularly lost in superficial diagnoses of media matters is this - one man’s media malaise favors some is another’s stupendous fortune. Confusion can be applied tactically (e.g., the battle over pronouns in the gender/sexuality wars). Overwhelming the senses has its uses. The keen media analyst must acknowledge that beyond desensitizing the consumer to senselessness, creating farce from Civilization-wide tragedy distracts the victim from the intentionality driving the most disturbing phenomena. I would argue we need to parse the logic of "creative destruction posing as information. The news itself may not be fake, but its mission is. How is one to read the cryptic, Jeff Bezos-owned WaPo motto, “Democracy Dies in Darkness”? Did I mention the story about another worker dying in an Amazon facility? The DDoS-like cacophony in the mediasphere and cyberspace I think ought to be 4D analyzed in the same phenomenal set as obesity, drug addiction and other forms of dependency, suicide, homelessness, non-participation in the labor force, non-voting trends and other symptoms of despair and absence of social enfranchisement. Impulsiveness, bingeing, over-indulgence, sedation, oh yes, and inexplicable violence.

Uncle Bob at his desk in the Sigmund-McLean offices (Beckley, WV) ~ RIP.

AFH UPDATE [September 2019]

THE CYCLE OF COMPLETION

On Friday the thirteenth, a full moon in Pisces, the project appeared to me, as if in a vision, in marvelous fullness. On the same day I completed the anomalous, synonymous painting (posted above). It occurred to me immediately to record the event in as much detail as possible, for multiple reasons. First, I am prone to forgetfulness, at my age and due to the damage inflicted upon my faculties over the duration of my life. Second, so that, should I suffer an untimely demise, my proposal might be enacted, albeit in its progressive fragments. Thirdly, to bring forth a discourse on the nature of artistic production, which to my mind is ever valuable and necessary. Although there are additional justifications for setting the dream in a document available, these several are fine to begin.

PROJECT ARCHITECTURE

The model for Cycle of Completion draws from Wagner’s Ring Cycle, which I have claimed in the past to be a singular precursor for contemporary 4D art production. Multidisciplinary, multimedia, with an inherent flexibility for location, the Ring represents a creative production capacity that has proven durable over time. Key elements include the libretto, the reanimation of myth, and open-ended creative technology, among others.

The text for Cycle of Completion consists of multi-layered narratives. A foundation for the story derives from Thing (There Is No Such Thing), in the context of within which we have The Matterhorn Project, Time for the 4D Art Thing, and other relevant 4D aesthetic treatises, which I have authored specifically for Cycle of Completion. The primary set of writings meshes with (1) contextual pieces, many of which are integrated with visual proofs; (2) commentary on current events; and (3) poems. A special category of signature statements that apply to Cycle of Completion can be drawn from extended narratives initially composed for exhibition materials, packages and publications.

The painting series constitute the focal body for third party consideration in The Cycle of Completion. To date, I have finished the first two phases of paintings (Network & WorkNet), and am working on the third (Currents, Flow + Reproduction). Complementary to the paintings, I have imagined a full array of dimensionist art. One can review my CV to get a sense of the type of work to which I refer: music, poetry, film, video, expressive performance (dance, theatrical vignettes, conceptual movement + more), net.art and technology-based creativity, printmaking, photography, sculpture. At this point, I have fairly defined programs in each of the listed media attaching to my vision for Cycle of Completion. The question of collaboration is open.

Cycle of Completion, as an enterprise, is framed as Venture Aesthetics, a term I have co-opted from Eli and Edythe Broad and re-purposed. The premise of production is speculative. On a practical level, the proposition for CoC is imaginary. I am an artist for whose idea the cultural infrastructure does not sufficiently apply. I take comfort in the assurances of artists of the past who lived in similar circumstances.

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #39
4D Quantities Series #3
Vinyl on Canvas
12" x 9"
$1050

PROJECT MOTIVATION

Intention is a neat instrument in the hands of an artist. One’s knowing the stakes of doing something does not necessarily translate into clarity of meaning vis-à-vis art materialization. The critical discourse as such has enjoyed its heyday by exploiting holes in the thinking of painters and sculptors. The Cycle of Completion illustrates a maximal divergence from the parodic practice typical in the past century of aesthetics, art theory and critique. The liberation of painting from critical diagnosis, politics, nomination, numeracy, identification, economics, and a host of destructive qualifiers is posed as a contrary operation in CoC. The image itself is rejected and in its non-place the original is apparent, minus comment. Realism is dissolved through the representation of the abstract. The Real is the Thing, and nothing else is required for the viewer to engage. Beyond the first encounter, or impression, I have infused the CoC paintings with a rich and dynamic thesis, which will be available in a media platform for distribution. The platform is itself mapped in the paintings, to establish a formal reciprocity that concurs with gift economy. The sophistication of the proposed system for conveyance is standard for informatics now. The extent to which the project presents itself as completion is governed by the will (motivation) of those for whom the art is created. My art is for humans.

Network, WorkNet and Currents, Flow + Reproduction series all focus on aspects of digital technologies, their intersection with analog tech, social media, wired consciousness and electronic ubiquity. The art confronts received definitions of being and becoming in this Age of Uncertainty. Civilization as is enforced on the global to local scale blurs the states of doing with extraction and exploitation schemes that are by design nearly unavoidable. Naive notions about complicity are vested in complex structures that span virtual and actual zones. The subversion of discernment among realities generates negating causality. An action creates nothing, a kind of no-thing possessing metadata, form, language and the ability to (be) reproduce(d) ad infinitum. Existence for such a creature is a function of machining, and intelligence may be assigned to its functionality. Reducing all awareness to counting is the basic program, a program for which art is no different from any other code. My art is not for computers. The moral conundrum hidden in the matrix? Does any artistic exchange between the actual art and any virtuality assure the demotion of art into the static Master-Slave regime present in all computerization? The Cycle of Completion puts the problem behind me, and offers a template for the workaround. Ultimately, art must encompass adaptation.

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A MOVIE

THE FLOW OF VESSELS

The pageantry of the maritime exists in tension with the mortal danger to the mariner posed by the sea. The turbulence of coastal waters where the Pacific meets the Columbia River is legendary. Those who navigate these shores have ready a litany of tales of seamen engulfed by storm and surf. The memories of those who sail and fish are traded and stored among the community who live one life ashore and another out there. Nostalgia and romanticism for the seafarer’s ways are countered by the raw and squalid crisis of the marooned… Along the shore the wreckage of small craft and ships gnarled among the jutting massive stones and foam. Visionaries wander among the boulders seeing faces in the shadows, hearing voices in the wind. In pools and eddies, life burgeons, trapped until the tides once more erase the boundaries separating each node from the whole. Fabulous creatures sparkle like jewels in the shallows, hinting at the wonders of the depths… The Captain and his Crew prepare the Ministry of Heaven for their voyage over the horizon. The hull, the gear, their outer wear and their eyes reflect the sharp grays, blues and greens swirling and boiling around them, in the morning fog…

THE SPIDER KINGDOM

The Season of Webs descends upon the village. The villagers complain incessantly, swat at skittering arachnids, which occupy every nook, cranny, dart from hiding place to hiding place, crawl over every exposed surface and set their traps to span in the interstices in the topology. Old Man Claddich on his way to the market walks between the berry bushes by Mrs. Swindle’s tiny lavender house, into a garden spider’s lovely shimmering web. “Crotchety” Claddich spins flailing his limbs in odd, jerky circular movements, swiping the silky, sticky web remnants from his grizzled, distorted face, brushing at his garments. Regaining his composure, and his shambling course, the fellow curses the eight-legged buggers and their mischief, not noticing the huddle of bairns on the Needler’s porch tittering at the geezer’s madcap arachnid-induced frolicking jig… In the Cave of White Whispers, the Spider clan gathers for their autumn festival. The Trickster Games are slated as always to commence with the rise of the Wolf’s Eye Moon at its fullest. The weavers will gather and choose among the finest designs, both traditional and contemporary. The costumes for the Spider’s terrifying mating ceremonies are draped on stones and outcrops in the silvery darkness. All one hears is barely discernible, harsh lisping language and ticks, clicks and chitters of the Spiders as they dash about in the grim shadows…

THE CLANS

Salmon and Bear clans come together to name the Hero and the Maiden. Sea Lion and Wolf clans meet to name the Trapper, the Hunter and the Fisher. The many people who inhabit the Standing clan territory trade wood, herbs, mushrooms, squash, berries and fruit and many other seasonal delights with the Eagle clan, which distributes it all within the Tribe of Aellin, with the assistance of the Confederation of Winged Folk. Crow manages the market, and many of the informal exchanges along the river, into the woodlands and even some mountain communities. Elk is chief of the hunts, slaughter and feasts… Throughout the year the people meet for sings, celebrations, ceremonies, contests and entertainments. The races and the gambling circles are the most popular. The flavor of the event depends on which clan plays host. Storytelling and trade are consistent features of any gathering, no matter the size. The elders of all participating clans govern the proceedings through direct communication in the common tongue, hand signs and a great variety of formal and informal measures. The Whale and Dolphin clans serve as intermediaries and messengers, the Crab and Oyster clans as guardians and witnesses…

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #42
4D Quantities Series #5
Vinyl on Wood
12.5" x 11.5"
$1200

THE BRIDGE

The enormous span marks the edge of the living world, and the gateway to the world of the dead. The bridge is called Melliesh-an now, but it has had many names, none of which have been adequate. One ceremony attaching to it is a one-day dream and meditation, the Prai-ah. The Prai-ah is performed only when no other ritual is slated on the day before or after the Prai-ah. An experienced visionary will attempt one perhaps once or twice in a lifetime. Recovery from the effects of Prai-ah can be prolonged. The season dictates the specifics of the ceremony. A disciplined dreamer will collaborate with several guides, usually clan elders who have undertaken the Prai-ah themselves. Preparations are complicated, extending to the relatives of the dreamer and those providing assistance. Activity in the affected villages ceases for the duration. The people have learned over time it is best to be under cover during Prai-ah. A powerful dream can stir all manner of entities, including the nesting dragons in the area. Madness can visit the exposed being, while the Prai-ah dreamer is singing. Children between in the Second Cycle are particularly vulnerable to malevolence in the dark hours of Prai-ah. The matrons of each clan spend the period baking berry cakes quietly, humming old story songs in unison with other aunties. No fisherman dares venture into the water, for fear of monsters summoned by the power the Prai-ah evokes…

THE COLUMN

Windblasted ivory white over centuries, the column Wyal-oh juts into the sky on a high hill overlooking Melliesh-an. The Sorcerer Gimly opened its pinnacle, and since then the column has served as a launcher for forays into Cloudland and beyond. Each generation the Column-keep is chosen from the boys of the Beaver and Raccoon clans. The Column-keep regalia is a beautiful fur robe, a striped tail and a black mask. Keepers possess qualities that do not appear at first to be well-suited to a perfunctory role at the portal. It is only when one begins to understand the two-way nature of Wyal-oh that the confusing identity of the Column-keep begins to make sense. The legendary Column-keep Braishe, who during his tenure single-handedly staved off an invasion of winged Nenel-nakz, in a gallant display of steady courage, cleverness and fast reaction. The famous Braishe Twitch is reenacted at both Beaver and Raccoon festivals in one of the Tribe’s most hilarious and riveting ballets. The Wyal-oh Shoot is another fun and entertaining collective activity conducted with hollow tubes, fire dust and pumpkins at the Harvest Whinchin, definitely a favorite of boys and old men…

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #41
4D Quantities Series #4
Vinyl on Canvas
12" x 9"
$1050

UNIVERSE DESIGN

I find it immensely curious that the Creative Design campaign and movement, to convert evolutionism more or less into a Biblical framework, has been normalized through serial media practices. Fictional myth as a commercial project is celebrated, and its most notable celebrities (the Game of Thrones concept team for instance) are granted social status that rivals 20th Century Hollywood studio producers and auteur directors - with a nod to scriptwriters and cinematographers. At stake is consumption of the Sacred, and the invention of Imagination. The medium has arrived as a formal convention driven by creative monopolies that contain management solutions, distribution networks, sophisticated data extractive schemes that operate mostly invisibly, and an economy that surpasses the material- or natural resource-based economies of the past. The term Plastic Arts should be re-examined within context of the phenomenon and its era. I have no idea what sort of institution currently is equipped to further such an analysis, and project the findings into mass circulation. Potential dynamic change agents (Institute of Network Cultures, Eyebeam, Rhizome come to mind) are not supported sufficiently and in a manner that translates into global awareness shifting Monopoly Corporate Media has much to lose by ceding its dominant marketing position to a de-centralized critical network. Even the most mature organizations, such as those I listed, I would argue emerge from ideology that hampers their 99% reach. However, reformation of the status quo media regimes is absolutely an attainable goal. The abolition of the most egregious abuses could be achieved practically overnight, simply by disenfranchising the media robber class and its corporate/political machine, through regulation and taxation. Genius technologists like Jaron Lanier who helped build the model we know today, have recognized its evil and impact on human society, have stepped forward with mea culpas and programs that eventually could straighten out the absurdly crooked system embedded now. The Universe I envision containing The Cycle of Completion belongs in the aftermath of a successful conversion to a sustainable (four dimensional) design for living, one which stipulates Data Dignity as an a priori condition.

Nets, Meta-Element + Wovenform Series [Currents, Flow and Reproduction] ~ Detail

AFH UPDATE [August 2019]

Occupation | [A-]vocation

Swerving into the channel of Phase 3 of 4D VyNIL, I produced a number of transitional paintings, before finding a sweet spot for the new work. The latest paintings exhibit many novel applications of Dimensionist technique, some of which I have been refining for close to three decades. The re-appearance of techniques I deployed early in my artist evolution generated some surprise on my part. In my first years of dedicated studio training and practice, at Notre Dame, and later in New Mexico (at the Upper Canyon Studios, then Gypsy Alley studio, then in the Pecos studio I built around 1990), I struggled to integrate 2D and 3D methods into the approach that on intuitive, nominal levels I recognized to be 4D. By trial and error, I sought to improve the precision of brushwork. I tried to understand the fundamentals of representation, but was routinely disappointed by the results I achieved. At the time, I did not yet comprehend that my optical handicap would always prevent me from perceiving proper 3D. Almost from the outset, I developed workarounds for my failings. I adopted a catalog of stylization for expression, drawing first from available resources, such as illustrations and comics, and later from art historical documentation. The photograph became a vital facet of my artistic process. I rooted through thousands of images and archives for inspiration. I poured through piles of coffee table books. I took courses at University. I visited major and minor galleries and museums. I discussed my findings with artists and academics, administrators and dealers. Inexplicably, I soon possessed potent opinions about art, and particularly, my own 4D art, relative to art writ large. In fact I could be fanatical, headstrong, stubborn and worse in the aesthetic arena. I admit the positions I took could be off-putting. I realized later that many of my contentions were incorrect. Nonetheless, I am deeply grateful for the passion that drove me to devote my life to art.

In the Currents, Flow + Reproduction Series, I am finally able to install those youthful technical innovations into appropriate pictorial structures. Some examples include outlines and striping, directional signals created with patterns, formal gradations for propagating dimensional illusion (gravity, shadow, spatial depth) and so on. The vinyl paint is wonderful in its capacity to accentuate these particular techniques. The combined matte finish, unusual color chemistry, the pigment’s variable texture - actually due to inconsistencies jar-to-jar of the medium and mix - help push-pull effects, flatten the pictorial surface, diminish a worldly reading of the impressions recorded in the surface. I am routinely selecting challenging substrates on which to test the vinyl paint. After a few layers, I am responding to the variations in surface texture through combinations. The fundamentals - color, composition or placement, sequence - are deployed with little expectation of an obvious conclusion emerging. Happily, sometimes the solutions are relatively easy. Usually, crafty extensions and derivatives are necessary to obtain the completion that satisfies my protocol. Most of the paint applied to the latest CFR Series is done so with very small brushes. The edge integrity is key to success in modeling shapes that activate the movement within the rectangular borders of the painting. The formally tight design elements propel 4D movement that force the viewer to question the nature of the space into which he is peering.

The CFR Series suggests a continuum with all-over painting, and with the imaginary infinite plane and line. The complexity is vital for adapting impressionistic juxtapositions of hue. I use high-order mathematics as a reference, when explaining the procedures involved in placement of colors, overlapping of elements, the inference of codes in the constructs exhibited within the rectangular format. My 4D methodology is Free Style, like Muay Thai. I am not a Hegel adherent, starting with a concept that materializes as an object. I reject the Benjamin contention that all human expression is linguistic. The courtly admonishments of Taste are obsolete. My art is not propelled by religious connotations and orthodoxy or dogma. The natural world exists outside the image, and the art insists on its own nature, as a creation for and celebration of Nature, as such. The elimination of fatuous citations of artificial reality in its multitude of iterations does not separate the art in its immediacy from our shared experience. The art proposes a specific reality, one that draws from a vast virtual and actual library of content, contributed by a diverse constituency. The circle is an obvious example. The seed form, the leaf and others acknowledge the impulsivity of the eye in its role in interpretative operations. The cards I made for the Network Series identify and project an initial set of shapes for use in the 4D VyNIL paintings. The type and use of such sets is infinite, limited only by the resourcefulness of artists who choose to play or operate in a 4D framework. If the paintings themselves are more often than not complex, the proposition they put forth is not. The body of work maps an invitation to any and all to engage in the documented, mapped assignment.

I do not believe that the procedure outlined can be described as my invention, or any one artist’s. I see the affinity of art and science, in this respect. I adhere to a program for art that welcomes the advancement of the discipline. When I first took up painting at university with the serious intent of a person accepting a vocation, I experimented with many materials. The first brand of paints I adapted to my vision for painting was Liquitex (acrylics). Since then, I have tried many lines of commercial pigment, and have even used my own recipes, from time to time. In the CFR Series I can trace the new color-sense to the one I brought to the studio as a beginner. The continuity provides a modicum of confidence, stability and mystery, because the continuum situates painting in the contemporary. I don’t hear many artists and critics, much less academics, dealers or collectors, addressing the emergent time-based features of Dimensionist painting, despite the proliferation of excellent examples. To admit my frustration would be a concession to the mediocrity that consumes status quo art marketing, absent the principled establishment of mutually beneficial criteria for quality in art. The current conversation is not nearly as rewarding as the act of making qualified art, to be its own sustaining argument. A student of art writing will eventually notice that informed and informative critics are not common.

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #23
Vinyl on Canvas
12" x 12"
$1450

The Vinyl on Vinyl Series operate in a separate zone from the paintings on rectangular substrates. First, these paintings are open for a kinetic presentation. Each one of them can be displayed vertically on a turntable. The format mobilizes the composition, simultaneously jamming the analog definition of the painting with electrical spin. The art is afforded the qualities of an object in motion. The image is static. A tension between the co-existent characteristics swivels the 4D aesthetic toward the discourse of the parallax view and concentricity. The optics of energetic infusion sustains the blur analysis for perception, pertinent to contemporary art on many levels, practical to theoretical to physical and beyond. The contingency of visual experience to the Machine (turntable) and external power source (wall socket), cord connected, evokes the ghost of Shannon. Further, the format (Vinyl on Vinyl on vertical motorized platform) is a cool metaphor for the computer, and for the Turing device, a sentient engine. The disc has over the past century emerged as a complex container for vast quantities (if that is the proper terminology) of human knowledge, ideas, expression. Flattening the human condition into a circular, groovy wafer has revolutionized the self-concept of our collective awareness, among other things. The fragility of information in the disc-medium is a fact that most Users of technology confront at some point. The crash or unintended erasure of a hard drive can devastate an archive, because so much data can be stored now on a single micro-facility. Memory, the back-up, are flip sides to a singular reality: our latest artificial constructs for storing consciousness are easily as precarious as their precursors. My V on V Series adds to the dynamic the conditions of artistic preservation, the memorial objective of the art enterprise. Further, V on V materializes the vision of Paul Valery, by provisioning an embodiment of his dreamy futuristic projection of sound-based environments for a new age.

4D Vinyl No. 14
Currents, Flow and Reproduction No. 21
Vinyl on 12" Vinyl Record
$975

The Topos Series plumbs the depths of materialist concessions to color, as an entrance into examination of the interstitial space or field that joins three- and four-dimensions. The value of selection, from an artist standpoint, is the demonstrative factor in these paintings. The Topos Series embraces both 2D art and sculpture, and invites both to occupy the same territory simultaneously. The texture here is the consequence of pressure, followed by release. The process is literally push-pull. The time element is articulated by the duration separating the commencement of each artwork and its completion, a period of years. The plastic medium that creates the form is throughout the period (beginning to end of production, including presentation) approached via additive applications. The various materials applied to the original surface generally are not commingled in a single piece. The water-based vehicle should not be receptive to the oil-based vehicle, especially when both are active. However, the idea that ultimately the paints I use are all oil derivatives, generates unorthodox solutions, and therefore unusual, but satisfactory results. Whether those positive outcomes are short- instead of long-term effective will be a question for the conservator, not myself. So far, so good. The demands of the practical may trump the archival, a nod to the contention that All Art Is Political, yes? Fundamentally, Topos Series is “about” attraction, the power of bonding, and the beautiful violence of directional division of the matched pair. Quite a few of the originals, which I named “Pixel Paintings” remain. A significant number were clipped from their stretchers for display in AFHGC installations, in the early phase of that project. The stretchers + canvas remnants were preserved in storage, until recently. I have yet to determine how those will be reintegrated into 4D VyNIL.

Topos Series 3, Number 4
Currents, Flow and Reproduction #25
Vinyl on Mixed Media on Wood
16" x 12"
$1400

This month, I’m launching production on a new series, titled “Nets, Meta-Element + Wovenform.” The substrates are museum board that the Sam Francis estate gifted me, during my stint at LA Packing, Crating & Transport. The initial layer consisted of woven forms, which show characteristics of the Rockpile Series, and elements from the Half-Moon Series. These simple black on white paintings were applied with a spontaneous, almost automatic hand. The application of paint is informed by much sketching in prelude. The format is a staple of my studio practice from the beginning. Two of my Ab-Ex heroes are Kline and Motherwell. I was waiting for the right project to use my lovely, ancient fan brush, and the “net” component happened to be that. Adding a Meta-Element to the composition was a mindful act, which required a lot of staring and pacing on the studio floor. I am very pleased with the first two completed N, M-E + WF paintings. The white PJM signature felt more formal on them, for some reason.

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Then, an anomaly materializes, seemingly out of the blue. In painting practice, the appearance of a novel object in a progression or sequence can disrupt the logic of the body of work. On closer scrutiny, given adequate comprehension of the principles at play in the aesthetic orientation of the art and artist, the “New” Thing may reveal much about the solution to some technical problem of a specific object. It may suggest a response to an irregular set of immaterial parameters. It may propose a possible future or past production path. It may initiate a redirection, or an unexpected suspension of the maker’s creative mode. Or it may refer to an influence on the artist that did not sufficiently drive the engine of visualization previously. Whatever the cause, or perhaps because causation is a secondary consideration in art creation, the pronouncement represented by a shift in form, composition, design, colorization exposes the internal process that guides the hand and eye toward an effected outcome. The poetic nature of the visionary artist is located in the liberty the artist prospects and projects by manifesting a palpably different or divergent thing, a thing never before seen by anyone, a thing not reducible to any one, other thing. “Speculative” is a term that has lost luster through overuse in contemporary art speak. The potency of realism is seldom due to anyone’s speculation, and in art, is rarely sufficient to the task of applying meaning to a thing which is inherently meaningful, absent literal recursion or conversion.

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #29
Vinyl on Board
25" x 7"
$1950

AFH UPDATE [July 2019]

Masterpiece

Number 18 of the CFR Series in my estimation is my first qualified masterwork. I share this auto-assessment with caveats. First, an artist who proclaims his own painting great is seldom confirmed by the critical consensus. Second, a critical consensus is an imaginary construct, currently. Third, the hierarchy for greatness in art is and has been a contentious category, due to analytic disparity. The critique itself is a weaponized fictional form created to foment cultural revolution. The Critic is a complicated designation. Social and New Media before it have radically reshaped the field of response to all virtual content. In its imagistic forms, in its derivatives, art is subject to a range of critical protocols that operate outside the aesthetic field. The corporatization of all Media shades any discussion of value(s) and meaning for art and artist. The competition for artistic means, the movement to transform “art” into a fungible designation, and other applications have the practical effect of diminishing the general comprehension of the artistic enterprise, as it has emerged over centuries in the West. Global art is a complex term that requires substantial “unpacking” to be discussed with acuity. The market(s) for art further muddy the picture. Is an auction price the proper measure of art mastery? Do we calculate artistic excellence by noting the number of institutional or retail appearances made by an artist or his work over a specified duration? What do we make of the notion of relevance for art today, in the performance review of the art maker and his product? Are management tools the proper ones for attributing greatness to art? Can we and should we make the general presumption of fine art a function of the business dimension? Ought art run more like a business, and how will that affect society’s perception of art mastery? As a technical term, does “masterpiece” carry too much colonial baggage to remain the linguistic “reserve currency” for the best examples from the Canon? The Canon itself has been under a multi-directional assault for decades, if not since its erection. Is the art historical pertinence of a Canon exhausted? If so, what are the implications for so-called masterpieces?

I can call Number 18 a masterpiece, if I want. At the moment I know of few interested parties willing to engage with my creative and theoretical progress to the extent necessary to judge the merits (of my art, the theory underpinning it, myself - the artist and thinker). From that point of view, I have little fear of contradiction in my auto-assessment.

Local Arts Update

Astoria Visual Arts (AVA) is presenting the Astoria Open Studios Tour 2019 July 27-28, featuring the creativity of fifty artists in 24 locations. I will not be participating this year, but wish those who are participating all the best in their endeavor. The AVA opened its gallery in downtown Astoria in 2019 and has been active in promoting and developing awareness of fine art in the community and beyond through very good programs that include an excellent residency, an artist registry and the Astorian storefront initiative.

Mess Hall Alternative Art Space at Pier 39, Astoria

Mess Hall

Instead, I consigned “Subnets” from the 4D VyNIL Network Series to Mess Hall, an alternative art space and dining area attached to Hanthorn Crab Company at historic Pier 39. Tom Hilton - Fisher poet, local legend and friend of the arts, himself an outstanding mobile photographer - is the owner/operator of Hanthorn Crab, which offers the best in crab, shellfish, smoked fish and specialty delicacies (e.g., crab cakes and cheese/crab melt to die for). His new alt.art venue features select NWC-centric photos, focused on the natural beauty of the region and evocative fishing-culture scenes. I am serving as consultant for the project, which I wholeheartedly endorse, for the Mess Hall content, context and menu. I LOVE “Mess Hall” as a gallery/art space moniker, not to be confused with Kunsthall(e), or maybe to be properly confused. I ripped some logo ideas for Tom’s perusal. I dig how the M + H collaborate. The upside-down “A” and the “V” are good for referencing “art” and “venue,” if not quite adding to logo legibility. The set implies a neat animation, which you can test using the nifty SS virtual gallery controls. Re: the logo; Tom mentioned his dad’s initials, an emotional contingency.

Subnets

The painting looked fine in its wrapping on the Mess Hall wall. Tom installed a portrait of a Morris Graves bottle I painted in 2004 or so and gave to Tom at some point in the past year. I will post installation documentation of the naked paintings, when they become available. I typed up a minor guide to creating a consignment document for Mr. Hilton. If you are interested in that material Dear Reader, I will happily share it in a future entry. I suggested to Tom he was being overly cautious by not unwrapping the artwork (after it was hung). As a former pro art handler, I will freely admit that I have a soft spot for contemporary art presented in its latest packing materials. Something about plastic, tape and foam turns me on, still.

END OF THE WEST (Photo: LG McLean)

END OF THE END OF THE WEST

Today (July 23), a wayward raccoon sauntered through the yard and the EotW installation, was about to move along, did a U-turn, and very deliberately knocked over “Blue Skyscraper” after tipping over the Rhino in “Song for the End of the West.” The raccoon then continued on to his next stop. My son Lachlan excitedly provided play-by-play commentary, as the scene unfolded. I had been wondering how the “Yellow Skyscraper” in the backyard got knocked down (twice) last week, and now I know. We have a little furry critic or art vandal doing mischief on his rounds. The NWC wildlife has been interacting with the EotW array with more boldness and frequency during the summer months. Visitors include deer families, with lots of fawns, a bluebird nesting in a tall cedar in the frontyard, and other critters. Lauren shot the photo above. We were concerned that the excellent job our landscaper Rick did would deter our non-human community. Not so. The trimming back of the greenery front and back was precipitated by a friendly reminder from our landlord Tad that we are contractually obligated to provide upkeep on the bushes and grasses on the property. I had neglected to inform him about EotW, post-storage delivery. It’s all worked out. The progressive consumption of the art (representing Western Civilization) by the lawn (Nature) had likely drawn the attention of neighbors, who value trim yards over time-based contemporary art, absent any declarative designation. I haven’t de-installed the pieces yet, but that may happen in the next few days. So, if you want to inspect the art site before it disappears as such, do so ASAP.

“Occupy Concentricity,” OWS Poster 2011 (PJM)

Occupational Awareness

If a citizen in the American democracy approaches his responsibility as such more than casually, he will take seriously the task of informing himself through available channels, starting local, moving global. Based on my direct participation in Occupy Wall Street, as a co-organizer of Occupy with Art/Occupennial/OWS Arts & Culture WG from 2011-12 through the present, I have continued to monitor many informatic resources and maintain sources that serve to expand my understanding of occupational phenomena arising from OWS, its precursors, and subsequent movements and uprisings. Followers of my communications and the AFH platform recognize my interests through the art and theory I generate and share, and through projects I make available in the public sphere. I would describe the endeavor as ancillary to my primary vocation, which is aesthetic. Since my focus is 4D, what is called for is analysis of all fields and sectors of commonwealth that relate to art production [which more or less encompasses every field and sector identified and mapped by Management guru Peter Drucker, extending from the main ones (military, government, technology, financial/economic, social/cultural/educational) and the essential subcategories (medical, arts/design/entertainment, management, manufacturing, etc.) even to a spectrum of subcultures, events and informal patterns or trends.

Creator: Alexandra Clotfelter
Origin: Savannah, GA
Site: http://www.ladyfawn.com

Currents

The profusion of happenings indicative of opposition to the 1% versus 99% status quo includes the Yellow Vest movement, which is - contrary to monopoly media assertions - ongoing. The unprecedented uprising in Puerto Rico is rocking the brutal regime strangling the population, via a kieptocratic economy and Kafkaesque governmental status quo. In Hong Kong, rejection of Chinese post-Colonial authoritarianism has materialized in massive street protests and subsequent clashes. Through a 4D lens, these phenomena are interwoven eruptions, pressurized by the routine operations of extraction/exploitation + command/control regimes/schemes/systems. The regional destabilization of Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the Americas must be acknowledged as a globally precarious situation. In my own media scans I find fewer reliable media with each day passing. Major media is practically useless, since it is driven by profit-motive and owned by entities who survive through truth-management, which is in the fictional continuum of Propaganda. The struggle for the future of humanity is what I gather is at hand, and the forces dominating the struggle are emergent in the fog and blur of false media projection. The Donald Trump moment in history is concurrent with the disintegration of the West as the seat of functional democracy post-WW2. The upheaval is radical and desperate, the risks existential. As humanity shifts to 4Dimensional perceptual/interpretive modes, reassessing Time, Space and our relations to The Thing (objects, order, experience), the likelihood of every sort of tension caused by resistance against this inevitable shift (through the invisible border separating 3 and 4 dimensions) manifesting in calamity is heightened.

Creator: Brian Tatosky

Origin: Los Angeles, CA

Site: http://twitter.com/virtualbri

A 4D analyst can readily track the sequence of massive confrontations, of which OWS was one. To my sensibilities the most profound of those occurring immediately is the Hawaiian protest against TMT (Thirty Meter Telescope), because of its connection to Standing Rock, and therefore its linkage to Bernie, Occupy and more. I wish the Protectors making the stand there all the best. Speaking of Rock, Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson made an appearance today at the protest and offered to mediate the negotiations between the occupation and the Hawaiian Governor. I admit that I put my 4D analyst hat on, whenever a consumer portable cultural icon shows up in support of Occupiers. It’s the point where Media Philosophy and a handful of other Media disciplines converge in image + embodiment with wide distribution off-message. The scenes are always awkward, especially when totally unscripted, which is not to say, “spontaneous.”

Graphic from “I Win. You Lose.” A Call to Action by students from the School of Visual Arts. Participants needed to occupy every corner on Wall Street and deliver a message…. ! (December 13, 2011)

Transgressive/-missions

I found a notice in my inbox regarding a project that is, well, Fake Occupy, to paraphrase POTUS. I subscribe to the Novad list, which makes some sense, given the site you are scoping is titled Mystic Novad, and I shared my feelings on the latest episode of BR/Bui occupational co-optation. For those new to subject, Brooklyn Rail is a venerable NYC-based monthly that Phong Bui founded with Editors Ted Hamm and Williams Cole. The Rail used to cover art and local politics. I wrote for BR during the OWS/OwA period, at Ted’s invitation, mostly. I never knew Bui, personally. Eventually, one of my essays precipitated an editorial conflict that resulted in Hamm and Cole quitting the publication to pursue other projects. My relationship with the magazine ended there, pretty much. The Rail (which I no longer read) apparently reduced its coverage to artsy stuff. Bui post-Occupy has engaged in curator activities, under the BR banner, a complicated - problematic - configuration, if one still clings to the antiquated notion that ethics have a place in the art world, or anywhere else, for that matter. Here’s what I shared with the Novadim, piggy-backed on a congratulatory email, for one of our ranks receiving final OK to practice medicine in the USA:

Does anyone else think it's bullshit that Brooklyn Rail's Phong Bui is co-opting Occupy (again) to further his art industrial ambitions?! Look here: https://mailchi.mp/brooklynrail/out-now-may-2019-issue-2532621?e=815761fcee

During OWS Occupy Arts & Culture WG was constantly on the lookout for and addressing instances when art world players used Occupy to get and promote unaffiliated gigs for themselves, their friends without going through the designated OWS channels. The still-impressive autonomy statement we worked on re-oriented what was going to be a co-optation statement, as some of you may recall.

So far Phong has used the Occupy moniker to promote major undertakings at Mana Contemporary, the Venice Biennale and now Colby MoA, as a part of a residency he's doing there. IMHO, Bui is an opportunist dirtbag (I can elaborate if anyone's interested... based on my experience at the Rail, and following his path afterwards). The Occupy Mana deal situated the group show etc in the whitewashing investment tool of a despicable, union-busting billionaire mogul with a very grim profile. In my analysis, the whole Rail curatorial series is colored by Phong Bui's controversial (at-the-time) affiliation with artist-evicting/gentrifying developers in Sunset Park ostensibly as a Post-Sandy community event ["Come Together"], but which actually glossed over the forcing out of many creative practitioners in that part of Brooklyn. Bui turned that event into a shameless self-promotion vehicle and top-tier artist-insider circle-jerk. ...featuring Chuck Close, Lisa Yuskavage, Richard Serra & 300 others, most of whom had extensive connections to the Rail, or wanted some!? That episode seems to have faded in the memory of many, although it happened in the same rent-raising, precariat-smashing moment that necessitated ASAP.

As I said, I can go on. Phong Bui is a bonafide douche, and represents much of what ails American art, when it serves the interests of the super-rich & powerful, and operates like a cuckold for their cultural tyranny here and throughout the global markets. As the editor of the Rail, he has wielded increasing soft-leverage in the NY art scene as the art media for the city has suffered the same shrinking effects/corporatization that has decimated the free press in this country. That he feels entitled to appropriate "OCCUPY" for his own brand and operations says much about power post-OWS, in the Age of Trump. In all Bui's messaging there is no direct action on the 1% v 99% status quo, only nominal pretense and virtue signalling. I find it outrageous, given what many (thinking of RevGames, OwA and others) sacrificed as committed occupiers. Bui and his select set of "winners" cynically have capitalized on the crushing of OWS. It makes my skin crawl.

[Witnessing from Astoria (OR)].

PS.: Blessed Mercury Retrograde!

No one on the list has replied to my complaint yet. Fuck you Phong Bui, you and all you other Big Apple art cowards. Your shit smells like Bushwick (Jefftown, LoL) when its 110 degrees outside in the middle of summer. Piss and rats. You fucking hypocrites.

A work in progress, currently on the big easel; working title is “American Flag 2019 [Currents, Flow and Reproduction (Studio Documentation)]

Independence | Isolation

The image above cannot convey the fact that (working title) “American Flag 2019” is perhaps the most challenging painting I’ve undertaken to date. I am uncertain unfortunately how long AF2019 has been a work-in-progress. Of necessity I resort to archival documentation that is sometimes inadequate. Gauging from the materials in the substrate (cage element, zip ties), I started AF2019 in the 00s, probably 2008. I added layers during the DIM TIM production in NYC. I believe I now have the techniques that will permit me to bring the art to its completion. It (AF 2019) presents a valuable opportunity to revisit last month’s discussion of isolation, and merge it with the theme that is in my mind in July 2019, which is independence. In my assessment, the fabric that constitutes a free speech in the USA and other societies around the globe is obviously under duress. Is free speech so subverted by Citizens United here in America that a commonwealth of ideas is impracticable? I don’t know the answer to that poignant question. The utilization of language for purposes opposed to liberty of expressed thought, experience and meaningful transmission has achieved a critical mass. Combining outcome-based authoritarian praxis with compromised educational facilities reduces the power of individual and collective voice to dictatorial call-and-response performance. To suggest the regime has a significant on art in community is to gravely understate the situation. The substantial capture of free press by a syndicate of forces results in the immediate fracturing of most important democratic activities. We can witness the consequences as the 2020 elections gear up. Or in the censorship of basic free speech in the mode of political, peaceful public grievance sharing. Tech platforms relentless ambition to divert all speech into the various lanes they dominate adds tremendously to the crisis. No topic is sacred. Science and the Arts/Humanities/Culture are positioned as either/or binary constructs. The recursive click-bait that monetizes people’s worst ideas and behaviors simultaneously promotes the stupid or accidental battles among parties who might otherwise find commonality. Polarization among every cohort outside the 1% is amplified, with predictable results. What is the antidote?

The Infinite Web Number One (“Invisible Webs”)

The Web [Is (,) Not Infinite]

The spiders and their webs are becoming visible again, ubiquitous really, as we near the end of our first set of seasons in the PNW. When we arrived in 2018, the webs and spiders in tremendous variety populated foliage, and essentially all the nooks and crannies of our home. The working title for the 4th phase of 4D VyNIL arrived with the arachnid revival: “The Web [Is (,) Not Infinite;” and the phrase coming was unexpected and welcome. I am thinking about the problematic relation of being and infinity. The questions arising from consideration of, for instance, not-being, of Time itself, of structures that span both Is-ness and the perpetual are fundamental, and naturally unresolving. The issues of desire (for answers, if nothing else), but mostly for comprehension of the universe that contains being and all, drives so much in our human responses to existence in awareness. Limitations (the finite) are the quality of all experience in bodily form. Belief in the erasure of boundaries is the root of faith, if not proof of infinity as such. To me these are the stipulations of great art, art that addresses the visible expression of both infinite and not. Mortality is only one version of finitude. Faith suggests it is the bridge to the infinite, absent evidence to the contrary. The mysterious transitions of form and formlessness do not define infinity. In the picture above I documented two distinct webs, which my naked eye saw as minute rainbow-lines, periodically reflecting white light. The complexity of these webs, their deadly effectiveness, the beasts who created them and the lovely prey who would be trapped therein, together comprise a phenomenon that is definitely temporary and fragile. However, every year some iteration of the phenomenon presents itself in what seems to my little mind a potentially endless set of possible shapes. What am I to make of this?

AFH UPDATE [June Update]

The third series of the 4D VyNIL cycle is titled “Currents, Flow and Reproduction.” The paintings in subtle aspects have come to reflect our environment, which is a potent NWC presence. The influence definitely expresses in the conceptual direction of the series. For instance, the idea of network culture, of work nets, has veered into a Real World analysis of cultural capture, not as an abstract consideration, but rather as a study of fisher and hunter society, in which nets are used to catch prey. Through new friends in Astoria, exploring the area, and the documentation of its history through a variety of means, the value of nets to support and sustain community life over decades is revealed. Net thus become a particular term, with direct reference to tangible objects. The Net as a 4D-discursive point of origin expands my original focus to new (for me) territory. I knew nothing about gillnetting on the mighty Columbia River before I moved to Oregon. The subject encompasses a spectrum of issues related to my doctoral interests. The industrial economics of fishing over the past several decades is consistent with commercial trends for this nation. It is problematic, complicated and bears heavy impact on the lives of those affected, their communities, politics and well-being. The phenomenon of Nets points to the difficult regional realities of post-colonial integration, evolving over time. Crabs, salmon and other sustaining foods have emerged as flashpoints in highly charged struggles among parties whose identity and livelihood is based on harvests of these creatures, and others from river and sea. The parameters of a 4D Net analysis can be set to emphasize the content that pertains to the substantial project of a NWC Net-story. How can one detach any such narrative from the others that typically define dimensional Oregon. These include logging, hunting and trapping, the mainstays of migrant settlers. The indigenous occupants of the country had to contend with the changes wrought by New Worlders. We can begin to therefor map macro-movements intertwined in American and global campaigns of war, politics and economics, and commence to trace elements appearing in current experience with their precursors and antecedents. Possibly we can develop some accurate predictions by evaluating the past and present conditions, events and trends. The 4D method draws from patterns that we can see in the world, and to a sufficient extent verify. The logic of Dimensionist analysis abides in the rationale for 4D painting and art, minus the names and numbers. The nature of expresses autonomy requires freedom from the nominal and numeric for the purposes of direct aesthetic transmission, from artist to canvas, canvas to viewer, in the context of time and timeliness.

The 4D art object may be re-contextualized successfully within its own progression of emergence. Like the history of Astoria, of nets, of America and so on, a 4D painting will have many contingencies. The Thing, of which art is one, embodies a practical universe of association. The linking of one thing to the next and the last is natural, a mode of reproduction, with each manifestation representing characteristics that connect it to others in the stream, or string. A lineal progression can be conceived of a series of points in a continuum. We can also imagine the Thing existing in a field of like entities, of created objects, being careful in our imaginary to not abandon the object to the presumption and consumption of categorization. The category is a utility of nomination, and the autonomy of each art object repels categorization (if it actually is art, and not the output of a machine). Reproduction and cloning or mass production differ in simple but important ways. In many instances, 4D VyNIL operates as a countermeasure to the operations of mass production. The covering of previous iterations, the re-purposing of Found and other types of “art” for the substrate of these new paintings suggests a geological foundation for 4D technical processes. Establishing continuity among art form and natural form is a function, an action, denoting artistic selection, choice. I would suggest that the operation evokes re-cycling as practical social task addressing the toxic idea of waste manifested in substance. The conjunction occurs between matter and The Thing That Matters, which is a scaleable construct.

It is in the finished art that the referential assumes a proper proportion. The sequence in a series of 4D art objects cannot be assumed to illustrate chronology as such. The proposition inferred in sentience is the underpinning of what is seen in art by the viewer. The dynamic is activation, which is infused with sensation, the sensual, our senses. A painting approaches the matrix of the sensuous experience for individual and collective through optical registration. It is not inappropriate to cite designation as a means to access what is art. The critical eye however confuses the interpretive mode with a special scenario for art creation. I consider such confusion to be an opportunity for education and generally invite critique in the post-studio interaction, as long as the critic is not interfering with another viewer’s experience of the art destructively. The studio is no place for a critic (other than the one, or the committee of critics, who can be located between the ears of an artist). The public space for art in free society is the appropriate venue for exchanges of many sorts. Yet is worth questioning whether criticism as such is merely weaponized communication, designed specifically to subvert or undermine democratic speech. If criticism exists on its side within an expressive hierarchy that contains art reduced to the theoretical, an argument must be made by the art to extricate art from any such competitive configuration. Art will always fail to be considered on its own terms in the critical hierarchy, since the two Things are not equal, are not the same Thing, and cannot be. Criticism is argumentative in essence, and to achieve realization must win. Art to be real must only be made to exist and by its existence succeed as art. For good or bad then becomes content for philosophy, for aesthetics, for critical theory and so forth.

THE END OF THE WEST

The concept of isolation must be reformed. Isolation is increasingly meaningless in the wired global new world order, except as an internal, psychological condition derivative of social engagement, or lack thereof. In the pure formalism of penal torture practice, isolation is a euphemism for complex brutality. The idea of isolation is integral to the idea of connectivity, as a technological aspiration. The space between us is the point of exchange. Interstitial life is, metaphorically, a ghost life, sentience spanning worlds and emptiness simultaneously. Words and gestural, performative and symbolic image project through the medium, an energized void, to bind one person to another, via shared understanding of the meaning of gesture, performance and symbol. The projection of language across nothingness is not art. It is however mysterious and possessing of causal potency. A bonafide (good faith) artist understands isolation as a fundamental component of studio work. A hermit commits to isolation for the amplification of spiritual resonance, the reduction of distractions. The recovering alcoholic must be vigilant to the pitfalls of isolation from his fellows. If the immersion of the individual in a collective engenders diversification of experience, the alternative is the movement away from the commons toward uncommon realization, if only temporarily. The perceptual quality of vision in isolation exists absent verification in the commons. For the artist, the process points to exhibition, so his isolation presumes direction. The others evoke an imagination of the promise of Wilderness. To have isolation enforced upon oneself, against one’s will or inclination, especially as punishment, is incitement to madness as a ruthless measure. The helplessness of being alone, when one longs for company, is a terrible affliction, one which scars, maims a person. Isolation for a prisoner is akin to slow murder, if one assumes we die alone anyway. The difference between execution and death by isolation is the hand of the executioner, not the will to kill. Isolation can destroy humanity, as surely as assassination. Isolationism for the globalist is a fiction, wrought to evoke fear in ordinary folk, for whom the specter of loneliness is an unwanted fixture. In globalist propaganda, isolation is simply the constriction of the desire for domination of everything, inherent in the ambition to conquer and rule the world and all worldly things. For the global elite, all worldly things includes everyone not in the set of super-class actors. Unsurprisingly, the role of art in service to global elite culture mocks the notion of isolation, except in its connotations of exclusivity. A cultural treasure sequestered in a castle owned by oligarch, serving his eyes only, is the cliche. When one actually witnesses a scenario like this, the gross failure of the arrangement is overwhelming. Inevitably the mad oligarch is insufficient to the masterpiece.

What do distance and duration mean in virtualized systems? The selective scan has been abruptly translated from the real perceptual complex. For virtual awareness, the identification of threats is altered. The search has assumed the protocol of the hostile takeover of systematic awareness. The User is a virtual resource, and meta-data is a complex source of analytic sustenance. When one engages in social media practice, the motivation may begin with the urge to join, to access mass collective culture, to escape current circumstances, to utilize cheap communication alternatives, to expand one’s mental territory, to expose oneself to strangers, and so on. Ultimately, a savvy User will comprehend that the initial promise of soc.med engagement dissolves into a dissociative regime. One is channeled into behavioral silos via the software, but also through subtle influence via interaction. The encounter is directional, but the outcome is lineal, as in a data tree. Our consequential, natural associative instincts move us into configurations for survival, reproduction, rich experience, etc. The virtual monopoly of existence as the function of time consumption accentuates reduction. The recursive impulse is inherent in the mega-mass industrial matrix of people, things and events. The point may be a point of sale, or another aspect of rudimentary business programming, i.e., repetition of messaging for market value (conversion propaganda). The effective virtual scheme so designed executes a plan of profound separation of one and one’s virtual profile. The self-conception is made to serve against the material entity for the purposes of the powerful, the market, the dominant, in a derivative processing protocol. Self-conception in this instance translates to autonomy, personal freedom, the capacity for self-realization in dimensional relation to a representative collective. The meatiest prey are people within democratic society, for multiple reasons. The co-opted processing scheme drains the vitality of the host (democratic) entity and system, using recursion. The result is the husk of the original, separated from every healthy sustenance, perpetuated in a “zombie” state as a hedge against crashes and shutdown. The Pig must be fed, no matter what.

“Two False Conceptions of Self and One of You” (2011-2019)

The affirmation of false conceptions of Self is a contingent directive pointed at someone else, but rooted in the advocacy of unethical, selfish programming at the expense of someone else. The intent is to unaccountably isolate. Action is made remote from consequence. The principle of the corporate formation is to decouple what happens from the causal entity or agent. Risk aversion is the impetus of incorporation, the prime driver of corporatism. The spirit of artificial personhood is complex repulsion from heroism. The bane of moral insulation from appropriate judgment is clear and precise analysis. The mime of responsible behavior is the performance of the corporation. A fake person has no interest in actual satisfaction. The bottom line of the infinite artificial Self is the avoidance of liability at all costs. The definition of the for profit corporation is return on investment, which has nothing to do with humanity. The corporation itself represents the interests of humanity’s opposition, which is a fabrication of the personal imagination gone haywire. To consecrate in law the existence of artificial personhood is to install the demise of human enterprise for the benefit of a few cowards. Weakening the masses of people is always in the service of minutely fractional corporate beneficiaries. Marketing is one means by which the destabilization of populations is accomplished, but relatively speaking, propaganda is not the most direct and dangerous corporate artifice. Violence is, but for the corporation, the prospect of dealing destruction upon the Enemy (mankind) requires proxies. The subversion of justice (e.g., the courts) is vital to the corporate objective, as is the co-optation of the vehicles for societal punishment (e.g., the penal system). The degradation of the people’s capacity for provisioning themselves is key. Slow-acting poison is a tactical tool of corporate syndicates. Control of exchanges obviously benefits corporate power. Radically undermining public education and replacing it with a command matrix aids the corporate mission. Disrupting all healthy modes of familial relationships improves the susceptibility of populations to corporate domination. Increasing individual and collective reliance on corporate products is fundamental to the corporate processing of humans. Replacement of Nature with cheap and inefficient artificial substitutes is important to the corporate world’s success as a sustainable concern with short term rewards for owners. Diffusion of responsibility is necessary in every aspect of corporate activity, so infusing the ideology of complicity is requisite for the corporate player. Evasion is a prototypical conduct of the artificial personhood. Meaning and values for individuals and collectives must be supplanted by the discourse of means and valuation.

Substrate for Effigy (circa 1995-6)

It is impossible to project the damage inflicted by 200 years of parasitic corporatism on American Life. All Americans should be clamoring for the permanent abolition of corporate artificial personhood, and the enforced extraction of reparations from all identifiable sources of corporate wealth. The reappropriation of all property, to be equally distributed among the People must be undertaken. A long period of reformation must be imagined and executed, during which the erasure of all mechanisms of corporate command and control, exploitation and extraction are broken and replaced. Democracy and corporate business are incompatible, just as the consolidation of the wealth, power and reproductive means of the few over the many is incompatible with Democracy. The two anti-democratic forces are really unified enemies, a Janus configuration, or more aptly, a Ravana-like embodiment of inhumanity. The nihilism in the core of corporate consciousness is a feature of its artificiality. Referring to the corporate as a kind of machine does not adequately address the problem of nothingness encouraged by corporate advantage over us (the 99%, as it were). The instinctual human rejects the aims of our corporate oppressor. At odds with the repulsive instinct, the urge to rebel, are the multivalent platforms of indoctrination that absorb and then destroy the best of human enterprise. The momentum of corporate evolution is always monopoly. The momentum of humanity is, in response, diverse multiplication approaching absurdity. In the face of extinction arising from corporate world dis-/order, we the people are fruitful, and over-produce ourselves. As the planet becomes more crowded, as far as we know to unprecedented levels, we pursue the strategies of pretense, assuming that plenty is a hedge against Invisible Hand of greed. Piketty correctly explains the fallacy, yet fails to dissuade the masses who will never read his text. Persuasion is insufficient to instinct. Urgency uproots currency. Fear is the mind-killer. There are 10 billion ways to put it, and more daily.

“Andrew Jackson’s Dueling Pistol” (circa 2014)

Isolation is useless today. I cannot move far enough to be free of global corporate power. As Capitalism and its negation (i.e., Communism, Socialism, Marxism, etc.) continue to enjoy popularity as a faux combat sport, the supranational elites seek safety from revolutionary democracy in all its iterations. The technology for erasure of separatism has achieved new levels of excellence. Its wizards (e.g., Zuckerberg, Bezos, Schmidt, et al.) have forged weapons and recruited huge armies of incredible strength. All semblance of autonomy is blurred. Freedom is as understandable as Ether, for the common man. Unsurprisingly, charlatans, demagogues, petty tyrants have entered the vacuum opened by endemic oppression. You may know them by their promises. Opportunists of the most horrible sort emerge to seduce the needful masses. One cannot avoid the caustic rapture that accompanies the bitter status quo, which for better or worse, is dramatically temporary. With increasing frequency, the cracks in the illusion of global corporate society appear. The stage that follows isolation is eruption. Indiscriminate violence becomes routine. Its cousin, serial killing, predation upon the “innocent” as a craft practice, emerges. The madness of cultural celebration through media amplification of these linked phenomena confounds the image of Civility by which civilization invents itself for each new generation of civilians. We must therefore distinguish the differences between being civilian and citizen. At stake is the ability of each and all of us to gauge the value and meaning of life in our present experience. The circumstantial quality of existence is centered in prioritizing Choice. Choice can never be isolated from all choice, from every choice. Without choice, harmony is hellish. A robot is immune to isolation. No amount of compensation is enough to validate the enslavement of a real person, for any reason. Whatever fake name one gives slavery, whatever number one binds to its production value, the slave and the free person are not possibly the same, and neither can justify the other. Democracy cannot condone slavery, just as it cannot support any assault on freedom of expression.

“Portrait of Morris Graves, RIP” (2005)

What do Morris Graves and Andrew Jackson have in common? At first glance the artist and President might seem as different as two individuals could be. Yet they do share characteristics. They are both dead Americans, for a start. How is it possible for a nation to produce such disparate figures, whose accomplishments and interests, such as they were, apparently share so little mutuality. Graves was a 20th Century pacifist artist in the Northwest. Jackson was a political warrior from the Southeast whose life spanned Revolutionary, War of 1812 and pre-Civil War eras. I only introduce these two historical figures as a binary for the purpose of thinking about media and reflection. The question of fame in fictional narratives is on my mind. Artists occupy a weird, often dismal niche in the topology of fame. The tendency toward notoriety among creative people is stereotypical. Given the small sample set, we do not really yet have enough data to paint a picture of the emblematic President. To an extent, we can examine America as a context for the content of Graves and Jackson’s lives. The validity of such an approach is not definitive, since the majority of relevant data will be anecdotal, and interpretive. We will tend to examine the memory of persons through distinctive perceptual lenses. Most would admit that fact and memory are not identical, and that human memory is as poetic, even lyrical, as it is concrete. Shared memory is a compound phenomenon. It is not a stable construct, in the presence of Time, under the auspices of shifts in consciousness (and conscience). In truth, as metaphysical propositions, Graves and Jackson are entirely conjoined Things. Any art about one is art about the Other. The contention is not semantic. I do not need to advocate for either man’s memory, for both people are functional components of an American Memorial that does not exist as a unified object in the space for such Objects (and their objectors, and objections). Art creates a dimensional space within which both Graves and Jackson co-exist, and moreover are entirely compatible. It is up to each and all of us to inject that dedicated art space with meaning and values. The realism of the art space is contained in its representative utility.

Study for “Thunder Dreamer” (2007)

June 6, 2019 was the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landing (D-Day). The world as we now know it is beholden to the sacrifices of many people who fought tyranny then. The AFH Update started with brief thoughts on isolation. Theatrical reproduction and homage are formal expressions, which are essential in the formation of social and individual values. Meaning is a consequence of repetition over time. An event for us is relative to what is known about the possible. A surprise is a breach of a pattern, an experience unfolding in the direction we assume it will not go. Our bodies and our society possess response mechanisms for the unforeseen, the unanticipated. I think art occupies territory in the platform of the unknown, and a great piece of art will approach the event, as an homage and a test to our responsiveness, personal and collective. Art connects to human survival in mysterious ways.

[PJM 2019]

OLD BUSINESS

• The CCR radio program I proposed, “Astoria Drift,” or Drift Radio, has been rejected. MGT determined the project would stretch available resources in directions the station and its staff believed would be detrimental. Without generalizing overly much, I have discovered that receptivity to my various offerings to the local arts and cultural scene has been fairly consistent along these lines, which is OK with me. I have more than enough on my table. There is a certain level of disappointment that goes with the rejections. Promise is negated, and vision is abruptly unfulfilled, even if redirected. Since Occupy, I have learned to make relations with rejection. The resulting position-shift and awareness enables an improved comprehension of management practice. Although I keep my findings private, for the most part, I see rejection as an excellent lens through which to deconstruct the systematic consequence of various forms of bias in selection processes for all kinds of enterprise. Applications are practical routine for this artist, and have been for decades. I apply to all kinds of companies and organizations, for many types of potential artist opportunities, in a range of fields. I am rarely daunted by the mental reservations that inhibit one from reaching out to an entity that presents an opening for a qualified artist presenting a quality idea. Over time, I have utilized the application to test the topology of the macro- creative profession, to study the selection protocols of a spectrum of organizations, and a long-term analysis of the individuals who operate within those businesses, agencies, institutions and non-profits. The dynamics in the field have morphed in my lifetime, and the shift is dramatic. I used to devote much energy, in the form of word-count and public appearances or presentations to the discourse. I no longer believe that a valid broad or exo-forum exists for the fair airing of the issues. I would argue that the arts and cultural arena is compromised to the same extent and in the same ways that the democratic free speech exchange is compromised currently, by many of the same agents and forces.

Underpainting Series #24 (2006)

• The website for auto-publishing my doctoral thesis is nearing a launch-point. I am so happy with the treatment master HTML practitioner Jen Robbins has given the material. It has been an absolute joy to work on the project with my old Domer friend Jennifer. She shared a link, if you would like to take a peek at the final BETA design, HERE. I will go over some of the beautiful design features, when we go live. Once the architecture is complete, I will be searching for a team of collaborators who can help me with tasks like data entry and testing, as well as editors/readers to refine the content. I have abandoned the projection of a timeline for the doctoral work. I began the doctoral candidacy at EGS in 2010, and when that path to completion apparently closed in 2015, I applied to Oxford/Ruskin School of Art to pick up the pieces and take The Matterhorn Project in a new direction. That year-long application process resulted in a summary rejection, and I have yet to locate a program with necessary capacity for my ambitious Dimensionist endeavor, or a vision for the ensuing program complementary to my own. The Creative Technologies Certificate track at Columbia Teachers College seemed promising, but proved insufficient. I have approached a handful of other programs around the world, without success. If, dear reader, any of you has a recommendation, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly, using the form on this site. At any rate, I continue to pursue the completion of the work as an independent, generating the paintings (art) for my doctoral exhibit, and preparing the immaterial component for distribution and defense. I have found the endeavor to be by far the most challenging I have yet undertaken.

Underpainting Series #26 (2006)

AFH UPDATE [May 2019]

The AFHstudioASTORIA era has commenced. I have maintained home studio practices a few times over the past 35+ years. It is not my druthers. That said, I have never enjoyed painting at home in designated art-making space as much as I am right now. I love the ritual of setting up the easels and tables, paints and brushes, floor covering and music. I dread it, too, until it is done. The issue arises from temporary solutions to what one wishes were permanent ones. I have set up and broken down quite a few studios in my time. The commitment to a particular working space configuration bears the marks of projected disassembly at some future date. The period in NYC forced a refinement in this department, and the storage quandary of the LA period proved as much a liability as an asset. Like any particular aspect of 4D art practicum, the conversation here suggests a point of origin for a broader discussion of art life. The onus on artists to constantly navigate the treacherous straits of property management and simultaneously focus on production and presentation is ridiculous. The art industrial system only provisions a few privileged commercial artists with the advanced means to maintain the various requisites for a sound professional artist operation. Through AFH channels I am privy over decades to so many anecdotes, emerging from artists juggling their responsibilities. Especially heartbreaking are the stories of elderly artists losing their life work as a result of eviction in predatory real estate markets. Very few artists can properly archive and store their materials and finished, in-process and unsold art. Very few artists can do so and also maintain decent living conditions for themselves and their families sustainably. A studio is a workshop, and manufacturing demands the upkeep of tools and all sorts of expensive supplies. Staging an exhibition is a complicated program, and converting studios to that purpose can be daunting. The romantic and superficial version of art life that prevails in the imagination of many people has little to do with the real thing. Artist problems conform to a great extent to the problems experienced by most small businesses in this country over the past 40 or 50 years, as corporate hegemony consumes so much Post-War and post-New Deal society. Like many of their fellows, 99% artists accept their difficulties as a personal failure, primarily because they fail to learn the macro-economics that are driving the circumstances of the population. If artists decide to collectivize effectively, the steps necessary to realize a more fair economy for art and artists are there to climb: reject 1% patronage; boycott all markets and institutions that cater to the 1%; establish local-to-national (and international) art exchanges; de-incentivize top-down philanthropy; tax corporations and the wealthy appropriately to generate funds for programmatic conversion of art to a more democratic version; restore support for individual artists; and so on. The 1%-owned (art) press will never condone a substantial correction of this nature. The massive response vital to overturn the cultural tyrants begins with the general comprehension of how pervasive and rotten the status quo has become, and that better, proven alternatives exist, and that they can be attained along with greater efficiency and outcomes for all. Or perhaps the change starts with a single direct act of insistence on a more promising future for art. Historically, both collective and individual action are useful in integrated strategies. In the post-Internet/social media age, dynamic shifts are possible at scale, in short order and long term scenarios. Now that we humans are 4D, the radical can become normal overnight, under the proper circumstances. We must develop Vision to materialize the world for all of us, not just a few. Then comes the Mission, and the Task.

Coast Community Radio is one of the gems of our new home town. I have embraced radio as an essential vehicle for transmitting the oral tradition of art, since the early 90s. My first live, on-air program was Art Talk, broadcast from a tiny studio in a nondescript adobe box, just off one of the main thoroughfares in the City Different. The station as it was then is gone, but after our recent reunion with the contents of four storage units in SoCal, I located the archive of material from the showgrams, as I referred to them, a sampler from Art Talk, and two subsequent iterations (Art Radio and Art Waves). Those shows were produced on college radio stations in Santa Fe and Nashville respectively. When we moved to the Oregon Coast I entertained the notion of reviving an art talk program. Over the years, I’ve passed on opportunities to produce shows in Los Angeles, for podcast, and in NYC, for various reasons. The evolution of the medium has been a phenomenon that I have tracked, however. Like millions of others, I am a big fan of Joe Rogan’s podcast. I also love Joe Nolan’s in Nashville. I knew Joe during my time in Tennessee, and was surprised fairly recently to discover the Joe (Nolan), with Brian Siskind, had launched a great show called “Art Fight,” which is a mash-up of discussions of combat sports and other artsy stuff. They cover a terrific range of subjects and interview a quality range of people, artists, musicians (Joe’s also an accomplished singer-songwriter), art business folk and the like. The art world has generated a fairly diverse list of podcasts, a shortlist of which can be located through a routine web search. My trajectory to a new AFH audio format project, in keeping with the visionary aspect of our relocation to Astoria, emerges from a dream I had shortly after we occupied our new old house, up the hill from the mighty Columbia River. I woke from the musing and hurried to record the outline in a sketchbook, which I later digitized as a concept piece for pre-production. Here’s that document:

Accidental Smart Phone Photo (PJM)

Big concept

• From a dream on Nov1 2018

• A sequential/serial movie that has multiple platform options + apps

Focal elements

• The River

• The Sea (fish, life, myth)

• The Bridge (bridges)

• The Forest (trees)

• Structures (inside are the People)

• Light (candles, lamps, sun)

• Filters (sun through clouds, light through curtains, etc)

• The Hunter

• The Fisher

• The Sailor

• The Homemaker

• The Gardener

• The Farmer

• The Policeman. The Criminal. The Bum. (No crime show elements at all. No overt acts of violence.)

• The Politician. The Preacher. The Artist. The Doctor. The Magician. (Circles of illusion. Clarity. Lies. Truth. Intertwined.

• The Fisherman > The ships. The tools. The Nets. Danger.

1. > Stories/storytelling.

2. > Dreams/

3. > Rain. Mist. Clouds. Ice. Snow. Drinking. Bathing. Preserving. Washing Away.

4. > The Seasons.

5. > Romance.

6. > Life & Death.

7. > Exploring the seams in the property regime where permission is not present/required.

} Cycles. The Echo is muted in the watery atmosphere. Resonance. The WAVE(form) Rippling. Frequency. Sonic sphere.

Magic > The Spide.r the D.ragon The Thunde.r

FIRE

Pre-storage-dump attic. (PJM)

After meeting with Coast Community Radio (CCR) staff over a period of months, encounters with some of the show hosts and performers, and extended listening sessions in the car and studio, I approached the station with a pitch for a show, The Drift. I first spoke with the smart and enthusiastic volunteer coordinator Janet Fryberger at the unique Tillicum House. After our meeting, I sent a clarifying brief that Janet passed on to station manager Graham Nystrom and others in the orgainization. Graham and I spoke by phone, and eventually I participated in the training and orientation class CCR provides for volunteers interested in hosting shows, or otherwise facilitating on-air programming. Through program director Elizabeth Menetrey, I brought my pitch to a monthly meeting of the Board, and later auditioned with Elizabeth, giving a presentation including media and text, with the intent of communicating a practical sense of the new program, where it might begin and what it might evolve to be. Here are the texts:

RE: Showgram Concept for Coast Community Radio

[Working title: The (Coastal or Astoria) Drift]

INTRODUCTION

CCR Swag (PJM)

On November 1, 2018 I had a dream about a sequential or serial movie that has multiple platform options and applications. The dream drifted through a fairly structured rendering of prominent local topological features, archetypal characters, Astorian stories about romance, life and death, seasons and other cycles in which a network narrative unfolds, intertwines and captures both the imagination and the “real world” of 21st Century Northwest Coast existence.

The concept Janet, Graham and I discussed for a program is a basic transmission of this site- and community-centric dream, which is becoming more specific on its way to realization. New layers have been added to The Drift, and that will be the format, moving forward. Echoing small town dynamics, the storylines will follow some central themes focusing on the place, time and people of Astoria. The storytelling will however develop the broad-stroke picture in detailed moments or vignettes, rooted in conversation as oral history.

The sensibility of The Drift is dreamy, open to a spectrum of sources, among which the episodes move fluidly. The Drift will present its subject on a continuum, which spans harsh natural realism and poetic and speculative sensation. We will project beauty in the same channel as we document the not-ideal experience. The key element to the program is dimensional time, as it affects perspective and perception. The Drift will take advantage of the serial format by opening space among and within each incident in a story.

If there is a word to identify the culture The Drift will embrace and promote, it is RESPECT.

CONCEPT

The Drift is conceived from the outset as a scalable project with diverse modes of presentation. Each type of format for The Drift can be optimized for production and output. The goal is to appropriately select content for the medium on which it appears. In short, The Drift will be a multimedia project. To plan or map the trajectory of the program is a vital function for the team, which we can call The Drifters. In my vision of The Drift, the show evolves logically, taking into account possible and available presentation media for which The Drift in its conceptual stage could make sense. Some of these possibilities were discussed with Janet and Graham in our introductory meetings. They include:

DRIFT RADIO

• A visual art-focused radio program

• Featuring artsy interviews of local-to-global cultural relevance

• Lite calendar coverage

• Some policy features to discuss issues affecting primarily NWC art, artists and the cultural community

• Some radio theater and musical interludes

• A meta-radio program that makes Coast Community Radio the main character of the show

• Like WKRP in Cincinnati

• Like the radio station in Northern Exposure

• Like the DJ in The Warriors

• Like G. Keillor’s long-form storytelling in Prairie Home Companion

NOTES ON RADIO: These could be two distinct radio programs, or one; whether or not to begin with two distinct shows or one that with the complexity of two (or more) depends on a number of things, much of it logistical, which we have already talked about, and which subject deserves more discussion. Another question is whether The Drift exists to begin with both as local radio station programming and:

THE DRIFT PODCAST

• Envisioned to serve a local-to-global audience through streaming media

• Inciteful and informative, like ArtFCity’s Explain Me

• Casual, like Joe Rogan’s industry standard program (shuffle Joe’s comedy focus for our art focus)

• Multi-faceted, like Joe Nolan’s Art Fight Podcast (shuffle Joe’s binary of art-plus-fighting to art-plus-theater/music/comedy and so on

• The Drift Podcast links to

• Twitter, Instagram, an archive

• Other Drift nodes online

NOTES ON PODCAST: The Drift Podcast bends the concept architecture toward social media, and a very different platform architecture with attaching economics. To optimize the value inherent in podcast production, The Drift team must consider how to shape Drift programming for a podcast audience. This is a creative opportunity that might enable a sensible transition from local live performance to the stream-accessible universe of network media, marketing, funding and viral expansion.

THE DRIFT BOOK OF STORIES / BOOK OF POEMS / THE DRIFT LIBRARY

• I envision The Drift Book of Stories as a serial novel, emerging from the stories written and performed for the radio program

• The Drift Book of Poems will be an anthology of works performed on the radio program

• The Drift Library is an archive (online) for texts featured on the program, but may over time extend to a variety of media

• The Drift Library can serve as one storefront to promote and sell text and other media content

THE DRIFT STAGE PLAY

To summarize this facet of The Drift project: A theatrical emerging from radio theater developed for and performed on The Drift Radio program, plus additional scripted vignettes that come together in a narrative arc for the stage. The Drift Stage Play, if possible, would be a collaborative production with Liberty Theater. The show would serve as an intermediary phase connecting the audio-only Drift with its multimedia, visible dimensions. Performance applies to a spectrum of disciplines (including music, dance, spoken word/poetry, theater, performance art, moving image and a range of correlating digital-only and integrated genres, such as VR). The Drift Stage Play would be primary vehicle for entry to that spectrum. The maturity of theater arts relative to some of the other performative mediums is indicated by well established networks for touring work, publishing scripted narrative and straight documentation of plays for screen presentation and projection in a variety of contexts and venues. The Drift Stage Play might inspire formation of The Drift Players, a company of performers for those potential modes of presentation.

DRIFT MUSIC

Think of Drift Music as the soundtrack for all things Drift. We will build a catalog that can be made available online through the usual channels. Drift Music can be the audio glue that binds the whole enchilada together, viscerally. Music can do that! We need a primo soundtrack, with a meta-catchy hook!

DRIFT TV

In a way, the radio program, podcast, texts plus library and stage production can serve to workshop a screen-based iteration of The Drift. For now, the concept of a version of The Drift produced for streaming or traditional format television show is an aspiration, albeit one favored by the current media landscape.

THE DRIFT MOVIE

The same assessment that applies to a Drift TV concept applies to a derivative movie concept: both are aspirational, speculative, prospective ventures with a great deal of promise, if developed and managed effectively;

THE DRIFT WEBSITE

An online portal for all matter pertaining to The Drift. I see this site as a nexus, probably best contained in an easy to use Content Management System (e.g., of the kind easily designed and maintained via Squarespace) for the Drift Collective and its various activities, as outlined above. Most of the virtual stuff described in this Production Concept section can be published in this format. The task of community-building and maintenance for a project of this scope must be scalable, with smart navigation, with flex design to support the range of devices and their network capabilities by which our prospective Drift folk access Drift multimedia.

PROJECT TIMELINE

2019

Launch Drift Radio; begin pre-production on Drift Podcast; workshop scripts for Drift Stage Play, TV and Movie; launch Website and social media; produce Drift meme campaign via web; start Drift Music catalog; build core production team; begin fundraising

2020

Launch Drift Podcast; begin design of books; continue development for Play, TV and Movie; present short performance models for them, including Drift Music; expand community features on website and social media, and extend these into regular local, public gatherings to test material and fundraise

2021

Produce first performance of Drift Play; release shorts to promote TV and Movie concepts for festivals and local to regional screenings; continue expansion of Drift online presence and multi-platform integrated functionality; publish first edition of Drift Book of Stories and Poems; host readings; produce first Drift Music festival

2022

Produce first season of serial Drift TV; launch production platform for all things Drift; continue development and release cycle for various Drift projects

2023

Release first Drift Movie; continue development and release cycle for various Drift projects

Annual CCR brunch/celebration/awards etc. (PJM)

THE DRIFT AND COAST COMMUNITY RADIO

I am presenting The Drift as proposed concept for development to CCR staff as a goodwill gesture and invitation to partner, to collaborate. The production tools necessary to realize all the projects sketched in the concept section of this proposal do not exist at CCR. From what I have gathered, CCR is a very successful entity, a clear mission, effective management and focused goals for its performance and sustainability.

The Drift is projected as a small-to-big cultural, creative enterprise. Its core, as described above, is a radio program, which is the hinge on which the door of The Drift opens or closes, at least initially. In my freewheeling, brainstorming discussions with Janet and Graham, the first production priority is to make a viable, consistent, quality radio program for CCR. That means working within the station’s current capabilities. Graham especially expressed the importance of recognizing available resources and not overextending them. He also made clear that the staff of CCR will do what they can to facilitate the Drift vision. Graham was straightforward about my responsibilities as program producer, in relation to what the station can provide at this time.

In my discussions with Janet and Graham, I think we all got a sense of the many opportunities a project like The Drift potentially provides for generating funds. Landing a major television, movie, book or music deal has a significant economic impact for any creative organization, public or private. At this point the strategy is to take baby steps toward that positive outcome, while not neglecting the task at hand. First things first, let’s do a The Drift Radio, and see how things go!

To summarize, I fully support Coast Community Radio, which is why I approached you with my idea. I will do my best to be a good team player. Hopefully, the Drift could turn out to be a very beautiful and productive endeavor for everyone who participates, and for the community stakeholders who have invested so much into CCR over the year. I think most importantly, The Drift can become a project that expresses the profound and unique beauty of the Northwest Coast, its compelling history and fine, resilient people!

[… DOCUMENT/WORK IN PROGRESS]

Historic Tillicum House (PJM)

For the audition, Elizabeth requested I create a script. This is what I did: an outline for an hour showgram; a monologue.

Astoria Drift [BETA Mock Script]

1. > Show Theme IN

2. > Intro

3. > Monolog (Bed)

4. > Music Break (Studio Session)

5. > Art World News

6. > Music Break (Artsy Music)

7. > Drift Radio (Theater): Milo’s Art Lesson

8. > Music Break (Soundz Sculpture)

9. > Commentary (Bed)

10. > Poetry Segment

11. > Wrap (Bed)

12. > Music OUT

    *ID BUMP FOR EACH SEGMENT

[SAMPLE MONOLOG]

Welcome to Drift Radio. This is your host, 4D artist Paul McLean. We have a lot of territory to cover, so batten down the hatches and prepare to drift. To open the showgram, we like to cover art news and emerging trends, currents if you will, in the Big A art world, so you Coasters are up to date on the latest and greatest stories impacting planet-wide art and culture. Let’s get right to it!

The biggest show of them all is the Venice Biennale. It officially opens May 11 and runs through November 24, with pre-opening starting today, May 8 and continuing through the 10th. This is the 58th edition of the International Art Exhibition, which is titled “May You Live in Interesting Times.” You can find out more at labiennale.org. Of course there is a massive buzz around the show. Artist Martin Puryear was selected to present his work in the American Pavillion. Have you heard of him? Have you seen his sculpture? There will be many other U.S.-based artists on view throughout the biennale. I read a snappy Sebastian See interview with one of them, Philadelphia-based Alex Da Corte, at the Washington Post. If you want to peer through the lens at the bizarro universe that is the exclusive A-List art thing, simply Search Venice Biennale or “Making Magic,” the title of Smee’s piece on Da Corte. We’ll post some related links on the Drift website to make it easy for you, dear listener. The process by which US artists are chosen for the biennale has very little to do with democracy and representation, as far as I can tell, after years of studying the phenomenon. I attended the 2011 exhibit and, whatever it really is, I would argue a serious artist should visit at least once, if possible!

The coffee is excellent!

In art market news, the 8th Frieze New York art fair happened last weekend and, unlike last year, Frieze was not burned by a terrible heat wave. My favorite write up appeared in the NY Times, titled “Frieze New York Addresses the Heat and Expands the Kitchen.” The article scans the affair and covers the major points with the proper insider-ish snarky-ness, which is not real. To get a sense of the art world that (I would estimate) 99% of us imagine when we hear that term, it helps to do a bit of research. Watch a movie, like the 2018 documentary “The Price of Everything,” or even this year’s wild Netflix horror comedy “Velvet Buzzsaw,” featuring Jake Gyllenhaal as a powerful art critic. Or follow a real big-time art critic, like Jerry Saltz, who has a huge following on Facebook and won a Pulitzer last year. Or read a book, like “The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art” by Don Thompson, which is a good introduction. If you want to get serious, drop a few hundred clams on the Handbooks of the Economics of Art and Culture, Volumes 1 and 2. Get a magazine subscription to Art Forum and check online at Art Net news and Hyperallergic, and before you know it, you’ll be able to hold your own with your average art snob and culture weenie. Or just listen in to Astoria Drift on Coast Radio. We’ll get you up to speed in a jiffy!

Finally, of course, the biggest recent big story is Notre Dame cathedral in flames, and now, Macron’s plan to rebuild it in just five years! Wow. Good luck with that!

But let’s face it. Most people in America couldn’t give a hoot about any of this stuff. We’re dialed into Game of Thrones, the NBA playoffs, the latest madness in Washington (DC, that is), what’s up with Taylor Swift’s upcoming release and the Spice Girls reunion tour, Avengers Endgame and whatever is popping up in your Instagram feed, maybe Mark Zuckerberg’s privacy plans for Facebook. To the casual observer, art doesn’t rate very high on the average priority list. Way below “What’s for dinner?” or picking up Johnny or Jane from school.

So, with that in mind, Drift Radio will offer some important, unusual perspectives on Media, Entertainment, Politics, Social Issues, and Mass Culture. Regarding Game of Thrones, many of you watched the Night King destroyed by Arya two episodes ago. I for one was greatly disappointed by that storyline, because I was pulling for the Dead. The Zombies, after all, represent the demos, the people, the 99%, and I really wanted us to win. As a true American, I loathe kings and queens, and am always happy to see them overrun by the hordes of everybody elses. Plus I have a deep professional artist beef with the aforementioned critic Jerry Saltz and another NYC-based artist critic named Walter Robinson, who established a hateful art diatribe and meme a few years ago that was picked up by most of the other top-shelf art hacks, called “Zombie Formalism.” ZOMBIE: That’s a stand-in for the 99%. The seemingly endless corporate wave of movies and television programs about the undead coincided with a tsunami of Superhero movies (like Avengers Endgame) and, unsurprisingly, stuff that glorify spies, torture, endless war, and so on, post-9/11. Does anyone else see a correlation between these phenomena and the current events? Is this dreck designed to keep our minds distracted from what’s happening in the real world, like Julian Assange, Ed Snowden, the corruption in our nation’s capitol, the New Gilded Age? Hmm. Who is this generation’s Bob Dylan? Jay Z (who by the way is an artist now)? Who is this generation’s Lenny Bruce? Jim Carrey (also an artist now)?

Your showgram host, by the way, is watching all Golden State games, and following the Trail Blazers, our local favorite. What an amazing time to be an NBA fan! I also love the UFC. Will Conor McGregor make a comeback, or will he stay with selling whiskey that brings in a Billion bucks a year?

We’ll continue to follow these and other stories in this and upcoming episodes of Drift Radio, and we will be asking your opinions on all the topics we focus on during the showgram. Now is a good time to point you to our Drift website and social media platform…

A couple of listener links before we move on. I love Ben Davis, who is National Art Critic at Art Net news. His April 26 essay on the Gretchen Bender survey at Red Bull Arts New York is very good, but I highly recommend his writing on the latest trends in the arts, media and culture, for a starting point for new artsies. I would also strongly recommend my friend Joseph Nechvatal at Hyperallergic, who does a stupendous job surveying shows in Europe and New York, with an eye towards art and technology. I would not recommend the hucksterism of Jay David Bolter, who recently penned a noxious piece that appeared in Salon, entitled “How the elite lost control of art

A core, elite group of aesthetes once determined what art was ‘important.’ That's no longer true.” What a long name for a brief adaptation of his latest book ”The Digital Plenitude: The Decline of Elite Culture and the Rise of New Media.” Unless you are into dry fiction presented as Big Picture analysis.

…Later in this episode of Astoria Drift, we’ll be talking to members of the world famous touring and recording band The Mavericks, Jerry Dale McFadden and Max Abrams about their art-related side gigs. From the archives, we’ll revisit a 1995 Art Talk interview with artist Richard Tuttle! Stay tuned for this and much more!

Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #3
Vinyl on Canvas
20" x 16"
$1450

The new 4D VyNIL paintings in process now reflect an exciting development at a technical level. The first several pieces exhibit a subtle resolution for composition with color and layered form. The latest ones, which I will present soon in the virtual format, here and elsewhere on the AFH platform denote a movement toward scale. The array of shapes within the panel or canvas boundaries draws on innovations charted in the first to phases of the overarching series. Sense of available space is a marked feature. Naturally, given the external circumstances - Astoria (OR) and Bushwick are characterized by vast divergence in the area of field density. There is more to the aesthetic phenomenon than physical environment. Spatial arrangement is perceptual in painting, which is a function of conversion of the content within mutable dimensions. The register of hues can accentuate the receptivity of sensation in the viewer, especially for interpretation and orientation. Judging distance is a medium for play, absorbing the distance between the artist and the seer. The repetition of things, the installment of patterns, the laying down of complex visual topology within the rectangular parameters of the vertical wall art produce a variety of responses that can be directional to variable extent. The initial encounter is momentary. The induction of familiarity switches the optical apparatus into an interstitial state for reception of stimuli. In 4D VyNIL my aesthetic promotes a neutral position for creativity. The strategy driving this creative presumption infers a setting aside of push media of every description. The calculation is that the seeing agent observing a finished painting is afforded initially a fair ground for autonomous art experience. As a doctrine, the method seems straightforward enough to need no further commentary.

As a component of our painting exchange in 2018, my friend Jen Robbins agreed to collaborate with me in designing a website for my doctoral thesis. The title I settled on, with a gentle urge from Jen, is A THING (THERE IS NO SUCH THING): 4D art, practice and thinking. For pre-production purposes she requested I provide her some images, color sets and other material. The gallery above contains snapshots of several of the color (palette) corner sticks I re-discovered in storage. The gallery below contains a couple of gradients I have been using as effect filters or digital patina in image series, since moving to Astoria. I also sent 2Wovenform7 in a range of output formats as a set, a pic of “Red Sun,” a painting I made for a DDDD show in 2000, and a banner using that visual data as a focal point.

It is such an honor and privilege to work with Jennifer. We have known each other since our time at the University of Notre Dame, the college we both attended in the early 80s. Jen is the lady who wrote the (O’Reilly) book on HTML, and her design work in the pioneer era of the web epitomized to my mind the neat vision of publishing that evolved into CSS and CMS, what I might call Beautiful Logic. She has attained a level in the Digital Thing that is in my assessment Yoda-like, if Yoda lived in a nice house and had a crazy talented kid and husband, in a gentle corner of the Northeast.

The exercise of compiling information was healthy, and as is often the case, led to other project ideas. I have not gotten to it yet, but the Wovenform collection process revealed to me a specific facet of 4D production over time, which has to do with recycling a Thing, which becomes a particle or element, through many modes of output, exposition, scale, placement and so on. I realized, let’s say “more clearly,” the role 2WF7 had played over the past 15 years, since I first drew it with markers in a small sketchbook. The Wovenform has emerged as an emblematic sign of my own 4D aesthetics, and an object unto itself, renderable variously, a mutable substance, with a rich profile. It appears as a central figure, as a decoration, a pattern, icon, projection and more. Jen requested a cover image and I knew what to choose for that utility.

PJM, 2019

My revelations around 2Wovenform7 and its many Dimensionist iterations fomented the desire and inspiration to produce a kind of retrospective, mapping the original through its derivatives. I recognize, unfortunately, that the likelihood of such a thing happening is not good. Too bad. The value of a thorough analysis of the WF progression for future generations of 4D artsies is high. Perhaps I will do a placeholder/kernel project via the AFH platform, in due course. My favorites include the monumental cut-/adhesive vinyl sculpture installed at AFH Gallery Chinatown, upon which we performed an OpFeek treatment; the mini-projector printed on acetate for A Prayer for Clean Water and 7 Episodes; laser-cut versions executed at the Columbia Teachers College Maker’s Lab in 2017. WF practically became a signature option in my digital work from 2006-15. Although I have used WF in animations for standalone presentation and effect-layering, I have yet to convert the image successfully into a “smart” thing. My first attempt to 3D print did not pan out. So, there is plenty of room to grow. Furthermore, 2WF7 is but a single manifestation in an infinite set of possible wovenforms.

Anyway, below are the comps Jen sent me. I had to select one of the designs to refine into a finished product, which I found very difficult to do. I am in love with every version she fabricated. Jen is a true master in her craft. The page prototype is HERE. I will continue to post progress reports until we launch.

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Jennifer sensibly solved so many of the conceptual and technical problems that had plagued my previous tries at publishing the material. Juxtaposing the handwritten original with the digitized text is handled intelligently. The navigation is logical and utile. The visual layout is in each comp a pleasure to my OG Web aesthetic eye. The painting. in Comp2 is the one that we exchanged. The clean-up and posting of the original sketches feels right and good. Man, sometimes you just want to shout it from the mountaintop! HOORAY!

THE END OF THE WEST

The 4D object array in the front and back yards of our Astoria home over the winter became overgrown with long grass mostly. John’s tar buckets filled with murky water. The fluorescent-painted screen on the ancient Mac monitor bubbled during extended storm phases. The gesso-treated wood frame constructions weathered, one accumulating mold, the other losing its pigmented but untreated clay skin. The ammo box brightened in hue, and the slugs inside oxidized. The Vision Channel Device panels sank into the turf and ceased to fall over with every strong wind, of which we have had many. Each piece underwent change. The sharing of documentation from “Inside>Outside” last month was partly an act for comparison, factoring for material, chronology and the titular realization inherent in the DDDD production. The project signifies my artistic shift over two decades. A community-based public artist practicum is massively different from a retiring home studio-based practice situated a good distance from the nearest major media center. I recall the early stage discourse driven by vision of ubiquitous fast data networks. Supposedly the advance of Civilization heralded a future for telecommuting, home office/computing and flex management solutions. The erasure of physicality as a logistical constriction for team dynamics ensured that global society would alter our collective understanding of cooperation, productivity and integrated systems. The barriers separating work and leisure could blur-shift toward positive lifestyle outcomes beneficial to business and worker. Predicting the profile of the 21st Century Citizen became a frothy enterprise for a sub-industry that eventually merged with social media. Nothing much turned out the way it was outlined in WIRED. Instead, the flow of technological wealth spurted upward to the New Oligarchy, exacerbating planet-wide inequality trends. Civil liberties were dismantled or ignored. The promise of the New Age disappeared in the Current Malaise. Scanning the media horizon, and the installation on the lawn, a title for my not-commissioned, speculative expression for the collective moment: The End of the West.

AFH UPDATE [April 2019]

Oregon Springtime

Our first Astoria Spring has thus far been astoundingly, profoundly, potently beautiful. Many of the notable features of the burgeoning season dent the armor wired media and hardware construct around our contemporary existence. In some facets the natural world here is subtle, and the infusive means by which our consciousness is breached are so unlike, say, the screech of attention-marketing, that one must be seduced by the sunset, rainbow, barking sea lions and such. The senses undergo recalibration, which conforms the impressions of the moment to environmental fluidity. Simultaneously, the animation of many intertwined layers of biomorphic eruption presents itself all-directionally. For instance, a mostly invisible path cuts through the edge of our yard, over which deer, raccoon and other critters transmigrate to other paths toward Astoria proper. The river and ocean, and the skies above them roil in their day to day shifts and ebbs and drifts, but this is not at all like Winter or Fall. To drive through the woodlands that surround us is a revelation. At a certain point, one has to orient the leveling of awareness in conjunction with the infinity of finite occurrence beyond the scope of numbers and names. The artist must admit there is too much to witness. However, the acceptance of reality itself is admonishment against realism, the estimation angle. The recursive solution to insufficient experiential capacity tamps down on one’s longing to immerse oneself in the present, which is clearly miraculous. We must admit that is how things in the world operates, absent our interference. Nature in default encourages Man to harmonize with It.

“Red Sun Derivative with 01 and PJM Signatures for Medium Banner” / 1000 x 2500 pixels / 2019

The Dimensionist perspective is not threatened by the ecological. Philosophy is refuted, at least to the extent that logic is surrendered to Name and Number in the philosophical context. Which is why I find Badiou to be representative of the confusion inherent in name-based equation, especially those that rely on recursion to locate multidimensional fact into binary systems. The virtual and actual aspects of the natural phenomenology refuse to repulse one and the other. The proof of eventual density is repeated in overwhelmingly complex patterns countless times in every instant IRL. Yet each of us witnesses and participates in this unfolding within the parameters of the sensual. Our curiosity about the extra-sensual illustrates life as a sequence of increasingly complex thought, eventually activating in what we call perception, which expands, like our brains, through convolution. We are learning the mechanics of optical, aural and tactile interaction, which are drivers of survival. Taste, in a humorous turn, long ago, via philosophy and Courtly Style, became associated with the whims of the Crown in Civilized modes of entertainment. Taste became the King’s whimsy, reinforced by the arguments of expert thinkers employed to that end. Currently that dynamic is being reestablished, with the return of the antiquated forms of control, conversion and conquest. Imagination is inspired by natural taste. Designing tastefully from the top-down is unnatural, in the extreme. So, you see, the world that exists for you to touch it is endangered by the disharmonious whims of tasteful elites.

Title: "Red Sun" [In Sickness & In Health]
Medium: Acrylic and ink on canvas
Dimensions: 12" x 12" (Unframed)
Date: 2000
SOLD

It may seem a non sequitur to pop into the art world positioning for AI. It is not, because the artificial and the natural are being reconfigured cynically, not cyclically and the project is a matter appearing in the discourses for novelty, taste, inside the general conversation on technology, in its interactive cultural qualities. The ubiquitous industrial marketing push for permissive (unregulated) and benign environment to “test” new apps is behind the multi-tiered patronage for artistic enterprises that further the narrative of next-gen humanity embodied in machine learning schemes. Structurally it is the same argument for dishwashers, updated. The Internet of Things must at some point conquer art. The toe-dipping experiments of artist-robots follow a script that has been utilized for elephants, apes, children and many other not-human types for the purposes not only of entertainment. The definitions of art and artist must always be sublimated to other societal forces, when the power of Civilization itself is threatened and/or expanding, plus threatened in its progressive inevitability. Reference the buzz around Anna Ridler. The tissue binding the organs collaborating to enforce the dehumanizing of art production and all human production promote a very destructive idea of existential hierarchy. The prime medium for such efforts is connectivity, which co-extends with many questions of value and values, means and meaning, at their countless interchanges. I tend to defer judgment on the rationale of co-optation, for my own mental health. I do however continue to approach the network problem in a Dimensionist manner. I can therefore deflect an urge for immediate solutions toward those that indicate a separate, specific chronological architecture for those problem-solvers possessing extraordinary virtuosity and personal integrity. While I know that I can never grasp the implications of the achievements of great practitioners in other disciplines, I can appreciate (sense) the nature of achievement in the work itself. In other words, one can in some cases apply the same interpretive mode one uses to sensually gather in the natural world to harmonize with mechanistic phenomena designing artificial society. Philosophy adds to the discussion in that endeavor, through the questioning of the machine, society, the artificial and more. Aesthetics can critique the configuration of art and technology, and deconstruct the theories of both tech and art in their value to the object, in its expressive features, if nothing else. If nothing else is the point of design beyond function, we must admit this is a format negation, and that the conversation is drifting away from art into other areas. Minimalism is a juncture for divergence, and there is much to learn from it. Now that we know the world is spherical, not flat, we can move on to the cyclic relationship to the rectangle, which is 4D+ in Nature, and as Heidegger suggested, a radical gift.

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One cannot possibly not be disappointed. The affirmation of identity as a societal defining norm may not be extricated from its partner facial recognition. Although technologists in the employ of mad tyrants and obsessive greedy fiends are not often forced to publically argue that progression and adhering to assigned task are defense against ethical science, the gear-head is no more absolved of responsibility than any other operative involved in the scheme. The complicity by proxy tack pushed by advocates of dispersal ethics and aesthetics (I see you Seth Price) do not inure themselves of wrong by avoiding accountability. The corporate anti-morality is not a viable condition for absence of judgment. Monstrous actors (e.g., Apple CEO Tim Cook) who press for boutique social change do not succeed in averting moral cause for the egregious performance and policies of the companies who afford them unimaginable wealth, power and prestige. Apple is a monopolist enterprise that pursues traitorous enterprise with foreign enemies of the United States to improve profits for shareholders, the corporate maxim. Apple is a notorious tax dodger. Apple brutalizes its labor force. Apple practices internal “culture” that denies its employees basic civil rights. Apple is a terrible neighbor, wherever it locates its operations. Apple selectively responds to the technical demands of its core users. Apple crushes or swallows competition that drive innovation and opportunity. Apple cares nothing about democracy, except in the faculty of manipulating “selfish” outcomes. The artificial personhood Apple is a blight on humanity. The material benefits it has provided would be exponentially increased through its eradication, reformation and negation. The Apple brand is an imagination killer. (Full disclosure: I am composing these sentences on an Apple-manufactured device; I am an Apple customer and user for more than three decades; my digital art production has been mainly Mac-based throughout that period; Apple has not produced adequate hardware and software for my creative needs for nearly a decade; I would love to transition to another platform - but that is what monopoly power produces). America should destroy Apple, or at least employ force to destroy its American business. The reality that the global markets and indices have been sustained in large measure by FAANG stocks is not reason enough to permit Apple and the other tech monopolies to continue to “willfully” harm the people, to harm democracy, itself. In fact, the destructive dependence of exchanges on our enemies infects the entire process of representative government in this country and any in which they deign to operate. Will a reckoning come? Only through the mobilization of Americans demanding equitable justice in every facet of our dimensional state. Apple diverts that vital movement into its corrupt and corrosive business model. American citizens owe it to ourselves and our ancestors to identify every player, like Apple, who benefits from the invasive consumption of our daily existence. Once we agree on a few of the worst offenders, we can start to dismantle the apparatus of our demise, one party at a time, by all available means. Art is only one such means.

Title: "Gargirlz [Jen + Rose]"
Medium: Source > 35mm black and white film; scanned contact sheet; digital enhancement
Dimensions: 756 x 1008 pixels
Date: 2001 (2019)

The original photo was taken with 35mm black and white film outside the Lone Wolf-sponsored Full Moon Tattoo Convention in Nashville in 2001. The image features one of my favorite models, Jennifer Menks and her friend Rose, who have matching shoulder-spanning gargoyle tats. I scanned the contact sheet and used a bunch of Photoshop and Painter techniques and tools to digitally enlarge the picture. The version posted here was downloaded from the AFH flickr site and again given the digital enhancement treatment. I think of these protocols in the same way I think of painter craft, even though the two mediums are very different fundamentally. The exercise of re-"surfacing" a virtual impression from a camera-derived photograph is in most actual facets alien to the pictorial realization obtained in painting. The simulation of realism via camera and computer is not visceral or sensual in the same way. Where the two disciplines converge for me is in the imagination, in memory activation. The blurry fabric of reality becomes poetic in both. I don't mind collaborating with machines. It is contemporary, and poses a basic question about concept and nature of experience.

The field of Media Philosophy, which only eight or ten years ago, appeared to be full of promise, is at this point another destroyed project of value. Geert Lovink and others made powerful arguments for the application of critique and other theoretical techniques should be immensely important to the burgeoning phenomena of media culture. The evolution of moving image and the prospect of commons via social networks were two arenas where MP offered substantive interpretive channels and support. Siting the technological shift to wired to wireless mobile devices within a smart platform for engagement was a cause that the monopolistic forces and monomaniacal individuals driving Big Tech could not afford. Why? At the moment that geekdom captured the global markets and a generation’s attention, calls to slow down the absorption of awareness and activity into a virtual framework controlled by and benefiting a few Superclass whiz kids could not be heard over the hucksterism and bragging. Steve Jobs was hardly a visionary, except in the definition of a “new” tech-powered Manifest Destiny that produced a refurbished Robber Baron scene in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Davos is a node for that scene. The short list of Uberpeople are invited to navigate a grid of secret, provisionally public or extremely exclusive convergence points, where the business of living from the top-down is celebrated and enacted via associations. The art fair/auction house/biennial/gala network is where the global art venture for the >1%ers intersects the other networks and nodes, through the individuals and foundations that carry the message and the juice of world domination. Soft and hard power mesh to the sounds of clinking champagne glasses, the “MWAH” of air kisses, the scratch of pens signing checks and contracts, the bang of the gavel, the simulated whir and click of fake camera gadgetry on smart phones, the roar of private jets, the scattering of gravel on secured roads, turnabouts and drives. The whispers do not broach the subject of radiation poisoning caused by iPhones, or the damage to young minds by poorly monitored screen time and addictive software, or the crisis of reality brought on by the machining of all sectors of human endeavor, and all facets of our perceptual complex. Instead, the conversation spans currency rates, tax havens, shell companies, sexy shoes, amazing Jeff Koons, and the opportunities in privatization of national treasure. Bling, fling, ring, Thing. All is gay, like the gay 90s, the gay 20s. Pay, play, gay.

"Cheerleaders" ~ I photographed a basketball tournament at the Raleigh County Armory (now The Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center), during a family/production visit to my hometown. WV's current Governor was one of the coaches. Back in Nashville, I brought my negatives to buddy John Guider at his studio. John put them in the enlarger, then shot these Polaroids. I used the images in a series of projects, some of which involved large format output. This was in the early 00s.

French Spring

My friend Joseph Nechvatal has been mounting a marvelous online retrospective of his own work recently. His effective platforms for the enterprise interweave Joseph’s excellent essays for Hyperallergic, plus his social media portals on Facebook and Instagram, and probably others to which he has access or on which his activity is published. To hail the Spring season, Joseph posted an image of Monet’s Bras de Seine de Giverny, Soliel Levant (1897), from the impressive collection at Musée Marmottan Monet. Joseph Nechvatal is defining a very important space for art within the digital + analog interstices, and has been doing so for decades. He is OG D+A, da. His cascading oeuvre ought to be a prerequisite for any wannabe artist open to the marriage of art-humanities and science-technology. Joseph is confronting on every level the conception of the object through the relationships that encircle the creative enterprise, as technical inquiry. The driver of the relational environment, its central energetic, is embodied in artistic imagination, and Nechvatal comprehends this at depth. Joseph is keen to contemporary physicality to an extent that few of his celebrated peers ever achieved. Matched by unfazed empathy, his consciousness of art-tech flow he directs toward significant examples in art and pre-art, which in themselves prove the value of integrated systems for cultural production. The database for his interests is massive, but he selects precisely the project that is sufficiently demonstrative of the moment, past/present/future. I respect his efforts tremendously. It is stupid that media is looking elsewhere, while Joseph sustains output at such a high level. But that is the conundrum for any of us who must by nature be devoted to meaning, to freedom of expression, to values. Enlightenment is not dead yet.

"Caitlin" ~ We stayed with Rosita and the kids outside Austin near Lake Travis, during portions of "A Prayer for Clean Water," "Overflow Show" and "Entry" productions. Caitlin is a family friend and modeled for some digital photographs in one of the outbuildings, where the computer gear was set up, amidst yoga and meditation supports, kids' toys, construction material, you name it. Digicams back then (mid-00s) were all sorts of frustrating. The shutter on one of the little Nikons stuck. I asked Caitlin to turn her head side to side real fast on cue and not move anything else. Blur still sent some pro photog geezer folk I knew into conniption fits in 'em days, as did pixelization or pixelation or pixellation, not be confused with Pixie-lated in "mountain talk," which refers to folks who are "touched," by the little people.

I reference Joseph as an introduction to the concept of French Spring (as in Arab Spring), a convolutionary eruption indicated by Mouvement des gilets jaunes, which now has its own Wikipedia entry. The dimensionist quality of the yellow vest actions is vivid, especially to those of us who participated directly in OWS. The blurry narrative for the event, which is serial, happening in a theatrical context (as Numbered Acts) has obscured the usual managed fictions that are produced by establishment media to minimize the success of the yellow vests. As with OWS the organization is fast, horizontally smart and network/social-tech savvy. The inclusive configuration of the yellow vests ensures that external attempts to reduce the movement to toxic sludge fail. The attempts by opposition power to bracket the yellow vests into a tactically viable fear complexes, for the purpose of pushing movement-debilitating propaganda are proving inadequate. The fortunate history of revolutionary France itself prevents such clumsy measures from dissolving the mechanics of insistence, and resistance. The through-line from Arab Spring to Spanish Anarchists to Occupy to Bernie to Standing Rock to the yellow vests is starkly visible to me. So is the connection to the election of Donald Trump, Brexit and other phenomena. The pressures on a global system pushed to the brink of WW3 are manifest everywhere. One can choose to carry on without remarking on the state of things, broadly speaking, to self-censor, or one can express oneself freely, with or without fear of consequences, and/or consequences. & That is the Crux of It. I re-posted a notification from Laurent Chambert, one of the French artists who participated in Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown, on my Facebook wall. I commented.

Title: "2 Deer with Facial Recognition Masks"
Medium: Digitally enhanced smart phone photo
Dimensions: 1000 x 1000 pixels
Date: 2019

One subtext of AFHGC was the objective and public demonstration of beneficial international relations, arising from artistic exchange. At the time (mid-00s) the Bush-led idiocracy was promoting notoriously awful memes like “Freedom Fries” (which also have their own Wikipedia entry). The huge popularity of Myspace (pre-Facebook, y’all) permitted unprecedented, accelerated interaction among wired creative people from across the globe. Shows like Buster at AFHG were in part facilitated by new social media platforms and communications/connectivity networks that were just becoming viable. We took immediate advantage of the opportunity to produce a prototype for art + new technology, with integrated facilities (brick and mortar/virtual), a real local2global endeavor. Emma Gray noted this on Artnet in her L.A. Confidential blog. The point is, we illustrated and represented a sustainable alternative to the incredibly destructive campaigns of Empire undertaken by the globalist elites in the name of the United States, with our collective wherewithal. Those heinous, criminal interventions served as preface and cover for the biggest redistribution of wealth in human history. International war and lawlessness established the necessary conditions for successful top-down Class War. In the current phase of power consolidation, most of us are experiencing a dimensional impairment of means and values. The common method of expression for the despair the situation engenders is the metaphor. Art is a better, more refined and efficient mode of expression than the metaphorical turn, which is why art is assaulted, devalued and debased so ruthlessly, by so many agents of anti-democracy.

"The Deer Were Watching It"

"01 Monitor (NASA)"
Monitor, Adhesive Vinyl, Lead-wrapped Wood
30" x 18" x 19"
2000
$2100

There is no need for metaphor, when one considers the case of Assange. A provocateur might call his stay at the Ecuadorian embassy torture, but hyperbole is unnecessary. The situation is an international outrage. There is no need for metaphor to comprehend the gravity of the DoJ report on Alabama prisons. It communicates horrifying travesty on a scope and scale that is a national indictment, because the conditions in Alabama are typical of the hellish US penal state, much of which is now for-profit. There is no need for metaphor with regards the 2020 Presidential election (speaking for myself, here). The Democratic Party is rigged. Good luck, Bernie. I wish you the very best, but I will never vote Democrat until the un-rigging of DNC is done. Relatively little has been changed in the aftermath of the Panama Papers, although some good has come of it. There is no need for metaphor to call out the transnational corporations and supranational individuals who, through a variety of legal and illegal schemes, sap the commonwealth of nations and their masses of people. The corruption post-Citizens United of the electoral process in the USA is not metaphorical. The list of grievances a citizen can muster in any given moment paints a picture of a society that is in short order drifting into anti-social territory. I see a neat, blurry juxtaposition of the gross reconfiguration of what “the social” means, with the fungible definition of art. I don’t need metaphor to do that. I can point to the Sackler/opioid scandal, but is that adequate, really? Especially in a media environment that mitigates damage to Super Rich status quo with propagandistic messaging (see “It's not just the Sackler family: Our greatest museums are built on the backs of billionaires” at the Washington Post, famously owned by Jeff Bezos, of Amazon). Bezos is not known for art philanthropy. Most recently he entered the tabloid pantheon of scandalous high-net-worth marital disarray. Amazon. meanwhile continues to reset American value of labor, one employee, one story at a time. Who will stop him in his megalomaniacal scheme for world domination? This is not metaphorical, not a comedy film by Mike Myers.

"Time Did It"
∞
"Glow-in-the-Dark 01 Monitor"
Vinyl Sticker, Acrylic, Apple Monitor, Lead-wrapped Wood Base
12" x 15" x 14"
2000
$2100

The banal New World Order has evaporated. The demise of the NWO myth is as unreal as its original formulation. The structure of the natural world is on balance a fragile thing. Variations of a few degrees temperature produce calamitous extinction rates among a wild range of species. The resonance of the loss of layers in a global ecosystem does not seem properly reflected in the markets. The Fed is populated by men and women in business attire who do not come forth into the square to lament the eradication of trees, insects or mammals. The absence of coordinated activity to reverse the course of ecosystem collapse among the power elites encourages comparison to the appeasement syndromes that preceded World War II. The most surreal characteristics of public discourse result from radical disconnect, separating the forum for voicing valid reporting on a host of humanity-threatening trends from the ridiculous noise emitted through mass media. Petty tyranny has been normalized in the usage of channels previously allotted to PSAs. The erasure of Net Neutrality by the fanatic FCC is indicative of the orientation of Trump-era bureaucracy. The IRS, EPA and other regulatory agencies, to say nothing of the relatively new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, have been in large measure rendered powerless by their long-time enemies in the corporate syndicates and bosses. Efforts to eviscerate the social safety net are exacerbated by fascistic valorization of force, surveillance and police state power, and the promotion of assassination, torture and endless war as settled matters.

"Did the Deer See This?"
∞
"Blue Rocket"
Gesso on Wood Construction, Lead-wrapped Wood
Variable dimensions
1995
$3000

Periodically, the most powerful people on earth, like hedge fund master Ray Dalio, have shared misgivings about the way things are going. For every doom and gloomy Super Rich oracle, there are three prepared to equivocate. Avuncular Warren Buffett is the one of the most high profile defenders of capitalism, a Gates Foundation-enabled philanthropist and a cypher. If one believes the research of Thomas Piketty, then Buffett ought to be taxed into obscurity or first in line at the guillotine. To many though Buffett (and Gates) are idols, akin to Sun Gods. People pay huge sums to share a meal with the Oracle of Omaha. Gates, and Michael Bloomberg, etc., are approached repetitively about their interest in occupation of the highest office in the land. Why? The fiction that American government should run more like a business is debased as never before, thanks to Trump. The myth of Reagan is defunct. “Trickle-down” economics has demonstrably no merit or provable basis in fact. The venal persona, the Bushian “compassionate conservative” is Mitch McConnell, who is more loathsome than even Dick Cheney, now. Bill and Hillary Clinton + Obama. WTF, America. All one needs do to witness the effectuated policy of these living and dead Monsters is drive across our nation. It is a sobering, somber experience.

"[3] Deer in the Front Yard Sculpture Park"

Look, I know where the money goes. I understand why lifelong professional artists like myself have been punched to the margins. If one commences even a cursory macro-analysis of economic policy in America and its impacts on specific types of work or industry (like art), a utile sketch can be drawn to help clarify the status quo. A 4D inventory moves the intentional formula (policy) into a framework of action, which unfolds over time. A study of impact is translatable through a lens of choice + consequence. An American artist over the past half century, like all Americans, has seen a stunning portion of national wealth misspent on a war machine that is failing to produce good results for the country overall. For amplification read this poignant essay by Maj. Danny Sjursen for Truthdig, which uses the draft and AVF as a springboard for a necessary review of military matters, since the Vietnam era. Or revisit the post-2007-8 Crash/Great Recession or whatever splashy media-pushed moniker you prefer to ponder the ugly miscarriage of financial justice that is programmatic Austerity. Think of Greece. The whirlygig of blame distribution performed by those responsible for the most spectacular manmade disasters of the Postwar (WWII) era after Y2K has consistently been weaponized to the benefit of the very people and companies who are the cause of tremendous for-profit suffering, waste, loss, horror, despair and death. So when I notice in my 4D scan that the US Army has made its first purchase order for a new submachinegun system at $2,575,811.76, I can do the math. The entire NEA budget is $152,849,000. The OXFAM report paints the picture in broad strokes. Stories like this one at The Intercept fill in the details. As suggested above, a quick seach with a few choice keywords and a bit of practice yield quick returns on available information. The crunch happens when Joe or Jane Artist bones up on the data and gets a note in the inbox from Americans for the Arts ringing alarm bells that orange POTUS is again introducing a budget that makes NEA and other federal funding for USA culture go the way of the dodo.

Splitting Worlds [Vision Channel Device]
*
Property & Church
(Deer in the Front Yard Sculpture Park)

To mark the last day of March 2019, I searched for “ART” on Medium. I periodically repeat this exercise to remind myself to not be surprised by the lack of clarity about what I do everyday, and what happens when I do it. The top results of my “art” Medium search are listed below. A few of the articles discuss matters germane to art and artist. The rest, as the reader can see, use “art” to describe stuff that is not artistic at all. Like “Shutting The F**k Up.”

1. ‘The Art of Computer Programming’ by Donald Knuth

2. The Art of Intimacy

3. The Simple Art of Not Being Miserable

4. Advertising: The Art of Manipulating the Masses

5. The Subtle Art of Connecting With Anyone

6. State of the Art JavaScript in 2016

7. The Art of Being Completely Alone

8. The Art of the Awkward 1:1

9. Practicing The Subtle Art Of Detachment

10. Sprezzatura: The Art Of Making Difficult Things Look Simple

11. How I Became an Artist

12. Art and Math and Science, Oh My!

13. The Lost Art of Shutting The F**k Up

14. The Simple Art of Creating Long-Lasting Habits

15. The Art of the Error Message

16. Want Your Children to Survive The Future? Send Them to Art School

17. The Art of Writing One-Sentence Product Descriptions

18. Don’t go to art school

19. Salt & Pepper — The Art of Illustrating Texture

20. The Simple Art of Getting Anything You Want

21. How to Sell Anything: Aristotle and the Ancient Art of Persuasion

22. Ernest Hemingway: The Art of Talented Writing

23. The Art of Stealing: How to Become a Master Designer

24. The subtle art that differentiates good designers from great designers

25. The Art of Making Good Decisions

26. AVA: The Art and Science of Image Discovery at Netflix

27. Machine Learning is Fun Part 7: Abusing Generative Adversarial Networks to Make 8-bit Pixel Art

28. The Art of the Strategic Product Roadmap

29. The Art of Attraction

30. The Art of Minimalism in Mobile App UI Design

31. The Art of Effective Visualization of Multi-dimensional Data

32. Using Deep Q-Learning in FIFA 18 to perfect the art of free-kicks

33. Stochastic Weight Averaging — a New Way to Get State of the Art Results in Deep Learning

34. The Fading Art of Philosophy

35. The Trailers for Ghostbusters (2016) and the Art of Editing Comedy

36. The Art of the User Interview

37. 21 days to be a better artist / (even if you’re terrible) / (and it’s ok if you are)

38. Judgement and The Ghost Ship Tragedy: America Has Abandoned Its Artists

39. The Gentle Art Of Negotiating And How To Do Exceptionally Well.

40. The Subtle Art of Getting Your Work Noticed

41. The Lost Art of Quitting

42. The Art of Living Deliberately and Designing Your Life

43. The Artist’s True Path

44. The art of iterating quickly

I don't think the deer got it. Maybe because the ammo box was closed when they passed it. "Baudrillard [Simulation & Simulacra]"

To wrap up the AFH April 2019 update, let’s take a moment in silence to commemorate the passing of Dan Robbins, the “inventor” of paint-by-numbers. I enjoy outliving the nemesis, with all due respect this “genius” and his survivors, admirers and the legions of paint-by-number artists and aficionados Robbins spawned, among whom is Andy Warhol. Also not living, now. The moral of the story is perfunctory. Closer to home, Astoria’s 109 years-old Home Baking Company closed its doors for good at the end of March. My family and I had over the past six months made regular visits to Home Bakery, and all of us had favorites. Lauren loved Haystacks. I loved Old-Fashioned Donuts and the Marionberry Pie. Lachlan loved Chocolate-covered Cake with Sprinkles Donuts, then Maple Bars. We loved the nice ladies who worked the counter and register, and already miss our visits. I will resist the urge to fold this bit of (sad) news into the threads weaving through this month’s AFH Update, although I the phenomena as coexisting in a unified field.

[In the Spring of 2010, Joe Merrell approached me about collaborating on a collective project, which manifested eventually as Gramatica Parda (which is now an amazing, unique venture that Joe has realized according to his own vision and inspiration). Our GP was exhibited at ANDlab in LA and featured the work of several other excellent artists, spanning illustration, sculpture, animation, native digital, web-based media, painting, digital prints, photography and more. In the pre-production phase, Joe invited me to visit the LA Natural History Museum, where he worked a day job at the time. The access Joe provided afforded me a tremendous opportunity to interact with and gather visual data for animations and a series of large format prints. I particularly loved the dioramas, which have a remarkable back-story.]

POST-STORAGE [Part 3]

I attended the FisherPoets reading at Labor Temple Diner and Bar in downtown Astoria to see my friend Tom Hilton perform. It was a wonderful and unique event. The venue was packed, standing room only. I have been attending poetry readings for decades, and I always love the ones that attach occupation to poetry practice (e.g., love me some Cowboy poets). Later, on a drive to Cannon Beach that included an astonishing NWC sunset, I asked Tom to get me a fisherman gig, so I can legitimately perform at next year’s gathering. I suggested it’s no different than Catholic high schools recruiting top athletes for their sports programs. He’s considering it very seriously, and he should, because I can do that muthaf*ckin’ poe-tree, y’all. Like Charlie Bukowski, we can go deeper, dear reader. Tonight, in tandem with writing this essay, part 3 of the Post-Storage sequence, I watched The Charles Bukowski Tapes, which I suggest the reader play as accompaniment for my text + images.

Geoff Cordner
"Salton City #1" [Edition, 1/25]
Photographic print (framed)
19" x 25"
2007
NFS

Photographer Geoff Cordner contributed "Salton City" in the AFHGC group exhibit "Buster." Geoff also marvelously documented the gallery and some of the projects, like Michael Brewster's performance, "Audition." We printed "Salton City" in-house.

For me, Geoff was then and continues to be a powerful visionary, an inspiration, whom I respect tremendously as a person and master of his medium. Nowadays, Geoff devotes much of his time and energy to long-distance running/racing and other demanding activities. An altogether extreme, sensitive, fierce and unique individual. *Note the reflections on the frame glass are not part of the print/art.

Authenticity has always been a thing in the arts, right? We owe this to Plato, and his jaundiced, republican perspective on artists. If you, O artist, are a priori designated a subversive illusionist, you’re going to take a defensive posture. After millennia of philosophical abuse from dead dude in a robe and his intellectual descendants in all kinds of quirky get-ups, no wonder we artists feel compelled to demonstrate how un-fake we are. And there’s always somebody shouting at us, the Man, the Judge, the social realist or the morals gangs, a church marm, a ghastly night manager with the ear of a king or prince. Dick Armey, Tom Delay, Adolph Hitler, I am looking directly at you! Decadent and obscene are simply flavors of FAKE! At the end of dumb things, as dumb time winds down, everything is totally fake and everyone is onto the sham, if they’re not on the take. The hollowed-out shambles of my country and quite a few others provide cover for the fabulous gay parties thrown by nitrous-sniffing cyborgs who once a year give a TED talk. I keep my ear to the tracks. Just last night my elder son mentioned the work stoppage on Bill Gates’ Chinese nuclear program. And how about Space X? Do you feel like we’re getting close?

THE ART FOR HUMANS GALLERY CHINATOWN OTTOMAN ∞

If you cannot rewrite history, which in fact must instead be overwritten endlessly until forgetfulness erases it, you can colorize it, or desaturate it, reduce it to black and white, to grayscale. Keep in mind, there will always be critics. For amplification, read Chris Hedges’ venomous assault on Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old. As a regular reader of Hedge’s over the past decade, and a fanboy of Jackson’s Tolkien films, I felt like a kid hiding behind the sofa listening to mom and dad argue in the kitchen. Hedges is a fanatic, and his anti-war, -masculine rhetoric strikes me as a kind of partial blindness. Demagogues as a class also hate art, when it does not reinforce their favored narratives, or undermines the primacy of the Word itself, as it (art) always should. Jackson on the other hand I get. If you can improve the thing, why wouldn’t you? Especially to memorialize a beloved relative? I would bracket Jackson’s effort with Robert de Niro’s homage to his father. I realize that false equivalence is a double-edged sword, but then movies aren’t paintings or sculptures, are they? A quality piece of furniture, however, can pleasantly add to the experience of art, a fireplace, a movie, even a super-stupid one like Christian Marclay’s forgettable phenom, The Clock. Did this guy really get all that attention for splicing together all those film bits, snippets of movies “the artist” did not produce. By the way, this is way cinema can not be classified as art. Not that corporate film people aren’t territorial and medium specific, when the novelty becomes the norm and technology threatens to shove the old winners out on their pompous, rich asses.

"DEATH [Recombined]"
Charcoal, Quin. Red/Gold, Stencil on Redwood Block, Technology
13.5" x 108" x 2"
2004
$2400

Created during Morris Graves Studio Residency and exhibited in "Bar Codes + Rituals + Subliminal Tapes. Ballerina figure (Molly) was drawn from photo data session hosted by Beckley Dance Theatre School (2003). The technology was added during the APFCW production.

I am working with Jennifer Robbins on the web site for my doctoral dissertation/thesis. The collaboration has been a magic catalyst for some essential resolution for the text + images, which will be first published in a virtual format, it appears. At present, my affiliation with European Graduate School is lapsed, probably permanently so. I have not entered another program. Which has not prevented me from continuing to work on the project. Today, I settled on a title: A THING (THERE IS NO SUCH THING): 4D art, practice and thinking. What do you think? A few minutes later, scanning search engine results for my prospective title, I discovered the essay that is the kernel for my thesis: Martin Heidegger’s "The Thing," in Poetry, Language, Thought (Translated by Albert Hofstader in 1971). A massive find, and I am in a state of wonder and exultation. One has to have a lot of faith to engage in such an enormous undertaking, and approaching it as in the backwards (thunder dreamer) way only adds to that condition. More later. Finally, I think I’m resolved to use 2wovenform7 [see 2wf7 used in “7 Episodes at CGU (2006) in a simple projection configuration HERE] as my cover image/source material to introduce the text and website. Reviewing all the variations and derivations from the original marker sketch proved a revelatory activity in itself. It’s a happy day!

"White Cube #1"
Wood Box, Mixed Media on Lead-wrapped Wood
7.5" x 7.5" x 5.5"
2006
$1100

The cubic constructions were MFA projects inspired by Donald Judd. A couple of trips to Marfa and DIA Beacon and other sites where Judd works were permanently or temporarily installed added another dimension to my practice. Judd's art writing and reviews also had a profound impact.

Mercury Retrograde will be in effect most of March 2019. It’s a good time to reflect. Remember the White Cube, the platform for contemporary art, adopted by most serious contemporary art galleries round the globe, post-WW2? The White Cube (WC) has to a great degree been disrupted and displaced, creatively destroyed, by the art fair and its white cubicle. Now the white cubicle is being impinged upon by the selfie-shop and other market dynamics and forces, including the long-emerging web-based market for art. Note the Volta NYC 2019 crisis, and the deus ex machina intervention by Zwirner/Hort, Plan B. The spellbinding pace of disenfranchisement and disarray for almost everyone except the Big Box monopoly franchises for art could put the quickest artsy adapter in a neck brace. For Believers, it’s Old Testament Biblical: "They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind." It’s not as if change was avoidable, although the process might be very different. For a start the White Cube and Black Box could be formally conjoined, with a head shop serving as a hinge, and an adjoining lounge for after hours or outside-the-box happenings and goings-on in the format of Meow Wolf [LOL]. That’s 4D for ya, in a nutshell. While Earth melts down.

"White Cube #2"
Wood Box, Mixed Media on Lead-wrapped Wood
7.5" x 7.5" x 5.5"
2006
$1100

The cubic constructions were MFA projects inspired by Donald Judd. A couple of trips to Marfa and DIA Beacon and other sites where Judd works were permanently or temporarily installed added another dimension to my practice. Judd's art writing and reviews also had a profound impact.

Which has nothing to do much with my imagination, does it? A multi-use facility [MUF] is what I outlined to get into the Drucker School Masters in Arts and Cultural Management program a decade ago. The MUF is a conceptual architecture I have been testing, since the late 1980’s, starting with Freedom Gallery in Beckley, WV. I have over that time proven the viability of the 4D model, and its expansive, modular, nodal qualities, iterations, derivatives and configurations, which are linked to digital and analog media, applications, networks and devices. The main components are the classroom, the studio, the performance space, the storage area, the exhibition space, the archive/library, the shop, the lounge and the office. The studio consists of pre- and post- and production areas or modes. Given all those collective facets of the confab or unified whole, the peripherals and additive elements, especially in virtual domains infer the possible mirroring of content throughout the hemispheres of culture. The reach of the operation spans local2global in a logical arrangement. The all-directional nature of free sharing of free speech material and immaterial (content and context) across all existing platforms is invaluable, if one has an eye on the future platforms for art and the humanities, as an expression of science and enlightened, rational society.

Milo Santini
"Portrait"
Acrylic on Wood
8" x 15"
$1950

Call it "tactical art," call it "conceptual," call it a prank. In 1995 my fiancee and I created a neat scheme, which involved a complex narrative for an outsider artist named Milo Santini, painting naive-flavored artworks by said invented artist, then selling them in a hotel lobby boutique in downtown Santa Fe. The name "Milo Santini" was *borrowed* from the bride-to-be's uncle, a very successful and amiable hack impressionist called William. The operation succeed too well. The project began to go viral, and was retired (mostly) after a few very funny months. We sold almost all the Milo paintings. This is one of the few that remains.

The option remains to preserve the design fiction of an art business that is capable of doing anything more than provisioning the urges of the super-classes. Due to safety concerns, except for safari-like neo-expeditions, the international oligarchy reserves for itself the power of free movement, while contributing to the chaos and upheaval that ensures obstacles to free movement for the rest of us. If you get past the frustration to analyze the immediate effects, the W/inners are constructing prisons for themselves and their kind (not-Other) and using their inconceivable wealth, position, (reproductive) power to fabricate or superimpose fully materialized superstructures to serve their needs. Food, transportation, entertainment, energy, communication, exchanges/markets/economies, armies, etc, the global ultra-wealthy are securing for themselves, more or less super- or supra-nationally. They are paying for it all via the complex array of tax havens, shell corporations, money and property schemes, asset juggling, attended to armies of experts and conventional agents and agencies. They are paying off (corrupting) any public official they need to to grease the wheels of their burgeoning empire. They are exploiting corporate monopoly media tools for propaganda purposes, mostly to deflect, project and transfer any negative consequences or attention to other players. America, for instance, is not an Empire, but that is a widely dispersed assumption or media meme. How did the definition attach to the US democracy? Who benefits from the disinformation, which poisons the conversation against the nation itself, and interrupts the assignment of causation to the actor responsible for the circumstance?

"Paradise"
Acrylic (Quin. Red/Gold) on Door
80" x 32"
2005
$6500

First exhibited in "A Prayer for Clean Water," with a stuffed bird hanging from the top of the panel, suspended in the upper center area. To my recollection no one asked what the meaning of the construct might be. Maybe it was explicit enough. The Quinacridone Red-Gold is practically burnished on the substrate surface.

Most of us would probably rather attend our lives, our families, our business, our interests, our loves, than pursue answers to broad social questions that nag at us. Because more and more people are exposed to the fraying of our communities in all dimension due to the rot of inequality, it becomes more difficult to ignore the reality. The problem is now a list of grievances: homelessness, joblessness, addiction and other kinds of madness, endless war, mass poverty or imprisonment; made intolerable, because our popular desire is not satisfied by our elected leaders, who have almost to a person been bought off my their masters. A sense of betrayal pervades our discourse, simultaneous to the lack of practical recourse to enact progressive change, to improve society, to leave a better for the generation to follow ours. America was founded to some extent on the idea of the Ideal, as much as it was founded on the practices of exploitation and extraction. The promise of America is intertwined in a Paradise narrative, that only partially represents the motivation of Americans. The conflict between the narratives is obvious to the world, and has been obfuscated by those whose selfish interests benefit from the conversion of Paradise into Hell for all but themselves.

"Clann Ghill-eain"
Acrylic on Canvas
8" x 20"
1995
$1250

Painted in Aberdour, Fife Scotland, "Clann Ghill-eain" was initially exhibited in "My Own Private Glencoe" at the An Tuirreann Arts Centre, then in the Electric Frog Internet Cafe on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, and again in "Where My Feet Stick to the Ground" in the Peanut Gallery in Nashville, TN (1995-6). Since then I pop this one into exhibits now and again. It is after all a kind of signature, my name, my tribal affiliation, a big part of who I am.

For some of us born native into this centuries-long American Experiment, it is become quite a task to unpack or unwind the true from the false about this country, which (spectrum of fact) is complicated, often by design. The framework of the nation when it was established is visionary, which is why it has been widely emulated by other visionaries, and attacked relentlessly by those for whom liberation social vision is an existential threat. The subversion of the Thing, and the consequent effective reduction of objectivity as means by which consensus in obtainable to a base state, continuum for enshrining formal stupidity to supplant the Thing itself ~ this is what passes now for good faith concourse, or bonafide free speech. Schismatic conduct is prioritized over the creatively seductive entreaty, or call and response induction. Reciprocation is divorced from autonomy, instead of being correctly understood as a timely process, a sequential event, a serial enterprise. The accumulation of wisdom is thus converted into a parody of itself, performance gluttony. The brute force of data visualization functions like that. There is nothing artistic in it all, whatever its advocates claim. It is a lie told with tools that purport neutrality. The corrosion and eventual usurpation of ancient standards of measure are the goals of the advocacy.

"DRAFT"
Mixed Media (Quin. Red-Gold) on Redwood
12" x 11
2005
$1000

"Draft" was started at Morris Graves' studio and finished during production of APFCW in Austin. The title refers both to professional sport and the military. Maybe "draft" also is suggestive of the process, of the BETA version. 1982 was the year I graduated from high school and 82 was one of the numbers I wore when I played football.

Enforced service to a common cause is the representation of a disordering matrix. An artist is usually very sensitive to the notion, whether the draft refers to military service, sports team operations, or sketching an imaginary object into a real thing. Connecting the dots and disconnecting them are divergent activities. If one’s dots are perceptual (see Kusama) then random applications are a means of combining all three types of draft into a unified social medium, which can be situated in contemporary art as an ersatz lab experiment, a project, fun, decoupled from war, from sport as a metaphor for colonial slave-based, mercenary commercial game systems, and Big A art itself. The induction procedures, the protocols of Church and King, and the art that justifies and rationalized the Order they represent, are reinforced in the command and control role of the Artist supervising the fake collective experience. The anti-democratic bent in so-called conceptual, performance, tactical, etc. contemporary “arts” is often traceable to a foreign patronage franchise. The passionate support for the alien, for alienation as a central topic, the prioritizing of the abject and strange experience of outsiders constitute a subject matter whose true focus is subjugation porn. The normalizing of mass reaction, from outrage and repulsion to exhaustion and compliance, is the point.

"Vision-counter [+ Transmission]"
Linolium-wrapped Particle Board, Electronic Components, Transparencies, Silver Tape + more
67" x 19"
2005
$3400

I have never really had what I thought was an adequate narrative "Vision-counter." However, my sense satisfaction with the assemblage is very strong. My memories of its conception are vague, even mysteriously so. "Vision-counter" seems to me to effectively represent aesthetic ambivalence toward the digital, the electronic, Benjamin's arguments on art and reproduction, or other's on technology, objectivity, the domestic and other contemporary concerns. 4D puts material and immaterial together more humanely, equitably, which is to say, logically.

The artist is encouraged to recycle garbage to produce “original” contemporary art. The oligarch joke in that trope is the inversion of waste models, which are part and parcel of Capitalist Civilization. The Marxist acquisition of means of production (of waste) reduces and consigns all praxis to the garbage heap. Junk is only redeemable in the scarcity model domestic economy, in the Collection of the Patron of the Arts, whose Eye saves art from disappearance and re-imagines it in a Canon, a sanctioned History agreed upon over time by the most powerful Few, the Survivors, the Old Families, as in “fantasy” Game of Thrones. Most of humanity is fodder for the cannibilizing drama depicted via the neo-serial small screen cinema, the dream machine for the new Gilded Age. The medium itself is a veritable dimensionist phenomenon, but not in the way the Media represent it (the medium), except when pressed by inconvenient opposition or just skepticism. The medium is the prime vehicle of the global surveillance network, a cornerstone of behavioral assessment and adjustment. The medium is the mind of management enforced, the foremost weapon for inducing madness on a massive scale. Fomenting sedition is the business of corporate media syndicates. Cultural erasure is the aim of the global hegemony appointed to C-Class executive seats on board of the “mainstream media.” The central characteristic of the artificial media personhood is cynicism, as a mask for anti-social psychosis, ultimately predicting episodes of genocide, and possibly extinction of the species (excepting the Survivors, of course). The most nefarious conflation evident in mass corporate media blurs the line between salvation and survival. With respect to art, the distinction is profound.

"Thunder Dreamer #1" [A/P]
CONTENT Portfolio #1
Digital Print
19" x 13"
2007
$1250

Each CONTENT portfolio contains 48 prints. The source material spans my early film photography (ca. 1982-3) through the MFA cycle (2006-8), including images produced for exhibition in the exhibits at Claremont Graduate University, Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown and Yarger|Strauss Contemporary. "Thunder Dreamer #1" combines a PJM Pattern with a figurative element, the Thunder Dreamer, which started as a sketch and eventually appeared in multiple iterations, multimedia.

I won’t get to the Guggenheim in time to see the Hilma af Klint exhibit in Manhattan. The NY Times calls it a “revelation.” The press materials push a narrative that af Klint disrupts contemporary art history, that she displaces the white male progenitor, art hero history for symbolic color, theoretical abstraction and so on. The chronology is the basis for this argument for revision of the modern art story. Presumably, the driver of the reformation is in synch with the institutional redefinition of global art, as indicated by the MoMA shift. Af Klint jibes nicely with the urgent serum for cultural misogyny. I won’t see the Mapplethorpe photography exhibit at the Gugg either. The museum will not likely be protested and litigated, as it was in Cincinnati in 1990. The cultural map has been redrawn and continues to be. Heteronormative iconography is rarely produced for mass distribution, absent snark and irony. Not to say that channels for un-Gay content don’t exist. They do. What are they? More importantly, what are the supporting narratives for material that is produced specifically for “traditional” families, and is this a matter of content consumption, production, or dispersion. The privatization of a public imagination is almost total. The American Dream operates “more like a business,” clearly, but what is that business? For whom is it profitable, for whom is it power-providing, for whom does it increase reproductive capacity? Most importantly, how is it sustainable, and who does it sustain?

"Abstraction Forms Thought #6"
Acrylic on Wood
Variable Dimensions (@10" x 10")
1995
$925

The "Abstraction Forms Thought" series arose from conversations with Richard Tuttle, during my the period I was employed at Goldleaf Framemakers of Santa Fe in the mid-90s. Richard was producing his Venice Biennale project at Goldleaf. He was a guest on my "Art Talk" radio program a couple of times, and once brought the Vogels by for an on-air interview. Richard's show at the Santa Fe Museum of Art and our conversations had a deep impact on my work and aesthetics at that time.

The privatization of space travel redefines man’s imaginary exploration of space, of the universe in conformity with preceding eras of colonial enterprise. America concedes its skyward gaze to the billionaire set. The oligarchic survivalist moves into the future budgeted to pursue riches in the far reaches of the galaxy, equipped with infinite life and technological supremacy, minus any accountability to, well, anyone or -thing (governing body) in the universe. Likely in the company of robot sex toys (pleasure devices) and war machines designed to never harm their owners. I would suggest all these fantasies arise from the aura of artificial personhood, except that peculiar legal construct, the modern version, the corporation is a relatively novel un-thing/thing, the creation of which refuses to make itself (AI) in its own image, but instead causes (as in collateral damage) the destructive change of actual personhood in the image of the artificial its manifest cause for existence. We do not yet know if the Universe is not wide enough to contain the mutating power of artificial personhood, for it to be subsumed in the body of creation. The conquest of personhood by the formulated legal definition of personhood is the defining feature of the dystopian present, particularly outside the gates of compounds for the plutocracy. It is not the poor who consume KFC. It is the other way round, despite the pantomimes of the present occupant of the White House, when he entertains sport champions. The cartoons of robots with people inside them, saving humanity, preventing catastrophe, protecting us from our enemies - these comics are metaphorical representations of corporate power, which fails utterly anytime it does anything other than make money for its investors, owners and executives, and to lesser degree, management.

"Ohm"
Digital Print on Perforated Adhesive Vinyl [A/P]
24" x 12"
2001
$1800

"Ohm" features Diane Avice du Buisson who was my yoga teacher then and still is today. Diane performed in the 01 production "A Cold Empty Feelin'" at ruby green Contemporary Art Foundation, hosted my exhibition "Jewels of the Nagas" at her shala Yoga Source and provided photographic material for a series of digital prints on vinyl, one of which was displayed at YS. The substrate for this experimental print was provided by one of the Nashville printers I did BETA testing for, either Chromatics or another one who's name I can't recall at the moment.

No doubt the media sphere produces in the churning deluge of its DDoS-like waves of information, cascading images + texts that pop like popcorn into user feeds. The bombardment of Tesla and Elon Musk (who really is behind this campaign anyway?), with periodic briefs on the latest car to smash into a tree or highway divider or building and killing the driver, fails to mesh properly with Musk’s extraterrestrial activities. It also inadequately meshes with Musk getting baked with Joe Rogan, selling a flamethrower and being slapped with contempt of court suits by US government agencies. The Mad Inventor stereotype (or archetype) brushes up against the Mad Billionaire Inventor stereotype due to the financialization of the global economy, but the precedents are there, and have been for centuries, if not ages. I attended a lecture a couple of years ago by Dr. Allan Chapman at Oxford’s Christ Church Upper Library that outlined the contributions of Tycho Brahe to global speculation, travel and conquest, via technological advances in the fields of navigation using applied astronomy. Musk and Brahe seem to me to fit nicely in a category of some sort. The crux of personality in science and art transits a fine line between novelty and catastrophe. The social media-attached news feed, rooted in dumb or retarded algorithms, hashing out the oxymoronic Artificial Intelligence for today’s distracted or casual Apple News or Yahoo News or Facebook reader, tends to stack clickable freak show tales over T & A celebrity filth over the bilge of gotcha journalism, disaster porn and police blotter fodder. Good luck maintaining equanimity in that environment of detached, quasi-fictional experience!

"Boo-K Array [Spatial Wovenform]"
Mixed Media on Japanese Watercolor Paper
80" x 80"
2006-7
$10000

"Boo-K Array" was created during my MFA studies and was only exhibited in "re-FUSED" at AFHGC. The surface is pretty unprecedented. The watercolor paper I purchased at a specialty store for artist and craft paper supply at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. They told me it was the largest sheet of Japanese watercolor available in America at the time. As substrates go, to state this one is an artistic challenge and blessing is a manifest understatement.

The concern from a media philosophy standpoint arguably is sustenance. The question is whether the criteria fits the media, because an agent can always claim, like Jon Stewart did, that his job is entertainment. The Gladiator meme (“Are you not entertained?”) riffs on the real issue. The stuff humans have done, are doing and will do for entertainment is eyebrow-raising , to say the least, by any current measure of prudence, sensibility, morality or even legality, depending on the situational citation or anecdote. Boredom is the bane of the Wise. Boredom is the mother of Entertainment and the starter or Master of Wars. The popular cultural analyst is attentive to the Bored demographic, because the click-hungry virtual media must be fed, and the bored user is a target, because the bored user is a mark for consumptive addiction pushers. To promise the Bored an endless supply of respite from their affliction (boredom) is to hack or bridge the complex abyss of engagement that separates the balkanized Self from all not-Self material or immaterial. To deliver is to hatch a junkie, who will gobble at the trough of your deliverable until you cease to deliver. Sure, once the stream is set up, the patterns of feeding established, the terms of payment arranged, the quality of time modified then minimized, the media pimp or pusher can squeeze the junkie ruthlessly and relentlessly.

"Thunderdreamer"
Acrylic on Panel
84" x 84"
2007
$14000

"Thunderdreamer" moves forward, looking over his shoulder (backwards). I also see this figure in transition, assuming Garudasana, the eagle pose/asana. The pre-production for "Thunderdreamer" was an hybrid process, integrating traditional and digital or alternative media. The painting began with a sketch. From there the refinement of the image moved into print processing, then cut vinyl output and projection, via moving image (animation and multi-channel video), as well as web-based distribution.

In due course, which is to say, over time, Boredom is the harbinger of atrophy. The best cure for atrophy is Shock. It is a savage cycle. An incidental, accidental or collatoral value of contemporary art is its trackable nature, which owes much to the convention of the archive morphing into its virtual mutation the database. The art world feasts not only on boredom but also on the Bored. It cultivates them, because in the networks of the super-wealthy exist a great variety of species of the Bored: the Pampered; the Pretending; the Pantomiming; and so on. Once all one’s natural needs are met, and one is saturated, if not satiated by plenty, beyond enough, the attractiveness of boredom is the fashion of realism. The cruel direct their boredom to the exponent of cruelty, which is a sinister pursuit indeed. Pleasure seekers who descend into boredom crave satisfaction beyond desire, and find the banal, the nullification of the body as a giver to please the mind. The residual sensation of touch becomes a hateful reminder of passion lost or wasted and replaced by the binary patterns of boredom and satisfaction, the processes of which reduce to the Identical. Boredom is the seed bearer of the Covetous. To covet is to know the urge to horde, to collect, to gather for oneself everything, which is the opposite of a Thing.

"Pyrrole Red Pixel Painting"
Acrylic on Cut Canvas
10" x 9"
2007
$975

The Pixel Painting series is my answer to the technical question the so-called Minimal artists proposed regarding an interstices between 2D and 3D artist practice, and object specificity. I worked on the Pixel Paintings during my MFA program at CGU, but the real solution for the proposition above I found in the Topos series of 4D VyNIL. The Pixel Paintings are the substrates for the Topos Paintings. The raised paint effect is created using heavy body Golden acrylics, pressed between similar surfaces, then carefully separated. My CGU MFA peer Quinton Bemiller has done a lot with this technique.

The intensity of the encounter is a feature of contemporary art presentation practice. Precisely how the viewer comes to art is a function of management, marketing, buzz, plus the architecture of the installation and the thought that goes into shaping the encounter. The viewer experience balances physicality, proximity, emotional content, visual context and chance, plus more. No encounter can be conclusive, nor should an installer strive for conclusion. A few years ago the Met in NYC displayed “The Boxer,” and then the Michelangelo drawings. In my (4D) assessment both were terrible exhibition failures. The mass of viewers destroyed the zone for exchange that must exist for art. The problem from an administrative point of view is balancing the concept of permanence and the temporary with value and meaning. The lens through which arts management peers at a masterpiece is tinted by the urgency of compromise, concession and critique. Contemporary arts management is underwritten by the absolute imperative to fail art, but not too badly. Meanwhile, achieving corporate goals, private or non-profit, is the paramount duty of management. Those goals are set by committee, in tandem with accounting, reflecting the necessities of development, as well as the focus of the institutional master or masters, owners or prime stakeholders. Maybe a museum cultivates and counts numbers - of visitors, of hits on its website, of dollars in its general fund. The corporate fiduciary duty will impose itself over the imaginary infinite lifetime of its artificial personhood, quite simply because that is its function and design.

"Baudrillard [Simulation & Simulacra]"
Ammo Crate, Metal Slugs, Toy Gun, Acrylic Paint, Charcoal
18" x 26" x 14"
2006
$2800

"Baudrillard" was initially exhibited in "7 Episodes" at the CGU art building Project Gallery. The reference to Baudrillard is a post-EGS titular superimposition. My appreciation of this 4D installation element grows with time. The pistol is a toy from my childhood, over-painted with luminescent acrylic. I believe I picked up the slugs in Austin. The charcoal was gathered after the Show Low wildfires. The crate came from that IE army surplus store where I acquired Army Joe.

What does it take to kill an artificial person? An artificial pistol? Where does one bury an artificial person, or does on cremate it? We witness the demise of corporations frequently enough to know something must happen. What is the proper ritual? Who does one invite to the wake, to the burial? The erasure of a corporate charter is a profound event. According to the Court, artificial people possess the right to Free Speech, and that mode of expression may take form of money, which is fungible. Should the company logo be buried with the dead corporation. Should company cars, a fleet if the size of the corporation warrants it, be interred with the dead artificial personhood? Should all actual persons employed by the company face the same fate as the company to which they have linked their destiny? Indemnification is a key characteristic of the legal profile of the artificial person. Does this feature extend post mortem? These and other questions apply to contemporary art, which is integral to corporate identity on many levels, and travels through the artificial person syndicates into actual, private person networks and nodes and back into the corporate fold, sometimes with nothing but the stroke of a pen. Provenance, acquisition and deaccessioning are the on- and off-ramps of contemporary art in transition. These are points at which the secondary market, the auction house, the insurance broker, and the collector adjudicate the flow of art between private and public spheres. To say the system is rigged is to state the obvious, given the available market data and anecdotal accounts of its practical performance. The reality of the art industry is dimensional and does not reduce to, for instance, matters of currency and taste.

"ArtStar"
Digital Print on Vinyl with Grommets
48" x 48'
2004
$7250

"ArtStar" features a model/figure shot on 35mm black and white film. The image was scanned from the contact sheet. There are many layers in "ArtStar," which is output on vinyl banner material and presented on the nail/grommet system. "ArtStar" was originally exhibited in "Bar Codes, Rituals + Subliminal Tapes" in AFH Gallery Eureka. The exhibit was sponsored by the Morris Graves Foundation, Ink People Center for the Arts and Riverwind, LLC. I forget the printer who output "ArtStar" for us during the project. Very nice people.

The Art Star is a marvelous fiction. Media dissolves the history of art so fast the bubbles of notoriety barely have a moment to reach the social surface. The insistence of those who argued successfully that art, like all else, must run more like a business, in their shallow heyday, sought to apply the Brand to artists. Dumb and desperate artists believed their hype. The corporations monopolizing art commerce adored the momentum branding enjoyed in the ranks of competition artists propelled by their BFA and MFA programs into the thick jungle combat of artistic careerism. The only winners were the galleries who could afford to endlessly grow their stables, without spending a penny, who, in other words, possessed A-List Branding themselves, and the raunchy players who leveraged brand identity into various episodes of exploitation and depravity on the fringes of art world conventions, fairs, festivals, bi- or triennials and every other convergence of the artsy elites, public and private. The BRAVO network art show starring Jerry Saltz and other notables, Work of Art, proved a hilariously ghastly new media abortion of a program. Work of Art itself puts to rest the nominal genre of reality TV, and thank heavens the zombie effect never revivified that abomination. WoA did have value, though. It revealed much about how TV studio people view the artist, the art world, art and the power of media, their medium.

"Pattern Print #6 [A/P]"
Epson Inkjet Print on Archival Paper
Image Size: 60" x 42"
2006
$2400

The Pattern series represent a point of resolution in my technical and theoretical progression as a digital printmaker. They were constructed and executed during my MFA course at CGU. Key components are: pixel level manipulations of source images; small-to-large techniques; dynamic symmetry; Photoshop-based dimensionist layering and pictorial layering with effects; and more. The series is stylistically inspired most by Scottish Tartan and Native American weaving and ceramics patterning. That said, the overall method is Real.Pure.Digital. The Patterns were tested in multiple formats on multiple substrates, using a variety of printers. This print was first exhibited at Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown.

The emergence of viable online marketplace alternatives [which span EBAY, Saatchi, Artsy and a host of template or CMS-driven experimental gallery formats and funding/purchasing formats, including subscription, dealer-down, percentage of sale models] has pinched the tail of the actual market. For a couple of decades the inevitable demise of the “real” marketplace seems just around the bend. The economic reality remains: the proportion of actual to virtual is 60-40%; for a crisper picture of the field dynamics, which are not art biz specific, see Chip Cox. Yet we can discern patterns from the classroom to studio to gallery to museum and the academy, bookstore, archive or collection, cycling through form into substance and back to form over time. The art world pattern outside time is superficial and susceptible to pendulum swing-like shifts in taste, interest, attention, whatever. The contemporary art pattern on the other hand resembles deep, invisible market flow, perceptible to elite analysts capable of immediate projection and value prediction. Most outsider/insider configurations are not-unexpected evacuations of the contemporary art sphere. Push and pull motion for the optical experience is a recognizable facet of the medium itself. The estimation of distance, which requires conception of center, propels the shared intuition of acceptable, practical intervals to separate (and bind) de-centralized events, nodes and materials. The program must be temporal-spatial in order for it (the program) to work, much less serve the field like a utility. The major auction houses were really the first syndicate to solve the logistics, primarily because they had the material resources to invest in the solution, but also because they exist outside most regulatory scrutiny, most of the time.

"Pattern Print #6 [A/P]"
Epson Inkjet Print on Archival Paper
Image Size: 60" x 42"
2006
$2400

The Pattern series represent a point of resolution in my technical and theoretical progression as a digital printmaker. They were constructed and executed during my MFA course at CGU. Key components are: pixel level manipulations of source images; small-to-large techniques; dynamic symmetry; Photoshop-based dimensionist layering and pictorial layering with effects; and more. The series is stylistically inspired most by Scottish Tartan and Native American weaving and ceramics patterning. That said, the overall method is Real.Pure.Digital. The Patterns were tested in multiple formats on multiple substrates, using a variety of printers. This print was first exhibited at Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown.

[Installation View]

The latest venture to cross my radar is Artfare. I like it for a few reasons. The model conjoins a nice mix of stuff you would want such an operation to make doable. Artfare is a website. It is a virtual gallery. Artfare is pushed through virtual platforms via direct contact. They have a good list. Artfare is an app. It facilitates face to face meetings between collectors and artists. It is a GPS-enabled device. The product can therefore be data. Analysis and diagnostics can be the product. Production (manufacturing) is done by someone else (the artist), somewhere else (other than the Artfare business office). Art is sexy tech. The artist list (stable) is curated. The platform is slow-grow, and exclusive, which indicates pragmatic management, but slow grow/exclusive also indicates a specific type of tech to market engineering. The launch is NYC-based/centric. For an artist, Artfare represents a market change. The destruction of the middle market for art translates to opportunity for other segments of the industry. There is potential for an artist studio to morph into a platform, to be reconfigured as a multi-use facility, to maximize the value of the artist Brand and the value of studio production. One can already see this occurring in the Art Star class over the past 30 years or so. I’m looking at you all: Hirst, Koons, Kusama, Murakami, down the line! The rogues’ gallery! The truth is, the upper reaches of the power artist elite more or less require one to maintain a factory for inclusion in the Serious set. Nostalgia for the Pollock mode of making has gone the way of the dodo, along with nostalgia, and art, as such.

"Pattern Print #4 [A/P]"
Epson Inkjet Print on Archival Paper
Image Size: 60" x 42"
2006
$2400

The Pattern series represent a point of resolution in my technical and theoretical progression as a digital printmaker. They were constructed and executed during my MFA course at CGU. Key components are: pixel level manipulations of source images; small-to-large techniques; dynamic symmetry; Photoshop-based dimensionist layering and pictorial layering with effects; and more. The series is stylistically inspired most by Scottish Tartan and Native American weaving and ceramics patterning. That said, the overall method is Real.Pure.Digital. The Patterns were tested in multiple formats on multiple substrates, using a variety of printers. This print was first exhibited at Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown.

If the artist embraces the superstructure that incorporates capital, manufacturing, marketing, distribution, property (real, intellectual and objective), management versus labor, accounting, inventory, HR, and so on, then the artist should expect the product of the system to conform to other like systems. Does such art satisfy? Is art ever tantamount to a product? I have a problem first of all with the assumption that anything put into words equates to art. The inequality of word to art is as extreme as the imbalance between haves and have-nots, which at least exist on a scale of agreement, whose poles are The Name and The Number. That Which Is Writable or Which Can Be Said need not be expressed as art to exist. The thinkable includes art, although art is not contained only in the thinkable. Art can express as the unthinkable. The truth in the unwritable, unsayable, unthinkable thing is in its absence from a beginning proscribed in any divine word we know of. Art clearly is not Biblical. Art does not have its Genesis in a Jewish tribal religious manuscript. The viral media phenomenon of that Word and the absence of art from it (the Talmud/Bible) is one of the historical cornerstones of Western Civilization, which, like everything has discovered and explored art, converted or conquered it, extracted it from its Nature and exploited it, and then used it to justify and rationalize Civilization itself. Civilized art, in its own Word is Tautological.

"Pattern Print #4 [A/P]"
Epson Inkjet Print on Archival Paper
Image Size: 60" x 42"
2006
$2400

The Pattern series represent a point of resolution in my technical and theoretical progression as a digital printmaker. They were constructed and executed during my MFA course at CGU. Key components are: pixel level manipulations of source images; small-to-large techniques; dynamic symmetry; Photoshop-based dimensionist layering and pictorial layering with effects; and more. The series is stylistically inspired most by Scottish Tartan and Native American weaving and ceramics patterning. That said, the overall method is Real.Pure.Digital. The Patterns were tested in multiple formats on multiple substrates, using a variety of printers. This print was first exhibited at Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown

[Installation View]

A normal, real (not-artificial) person can only comprehend the Tautology of the Word of Civilization through a fictional medium. Art is not fictional, although so much of art represents or depicts false narratives. The preset narrative of art is fictional, like all preset narrative. Nothing in art is predetermined. The craft aspects of an art object however are another thing altogether. The entirety of a good stretcher, frame, prepared substrate, paint and so on, is a prepared to artistic specifications. The compatibility of the determinate and indeterminate aspects of art is a function of the unifying quality of the process by which art appears and remains apparent. The time function of art is resisted through craft and proven over time. The quality of art is simultaneously autonomous and contingent within the determined material features of art, which features help designate art as art for a viewer, but also function to conserve the art itself for as long as possible, in the best condition possible. Re-litigating this point never succeeds in destroying art and its complementary craft elements. The longevity of art and art crafts contradicts, for instance, painting’s death, in the same way that breath contradicts the mortality of a person. One can argue the person is deceased, but as long as the person continues to breathe, death has yet to arrive. The question of whether art will outlast humanity is unknowable. The more interesting question would be, “What would be the point, if art outlasts humanity?”

"Cowboy [3/4 Pose 2 Gun Hart]"
Mixed Media (Painted Frame with Silver Tape and Adhesive Prints)
13.5" x 11.5"
1997-2006
$950

One of the original COWBOYZ + COWGIRLZ "2 Gun Hart" series first exhibited at Four Crows Gallery, later at Dreamworks SKG (Nashville). Additional layers and materials added for "A Prayer for Clean Water" cycle of exhibits in Austin. This piece was installed at Pump Project for "Overflow Show."

The ubiquity of the corporate presence presupposes un-being as the preeminent culture driver in line with the syndicate fiat, the credit card. The dangerous imaginary money of corporate money demands a never-ending supply of corporate cultural production, the cult of entertainment. The hilarious episodes of Captain Marvel and Ghostbusters (2016 version) illustrate the confounding of the marketeers pushed by HR departments, responding to C-Class fatwas, being woke to focus group results and kept up-to-data by politico-demographers whose kids will go to school at Harvard or Stanford or MIT or Oxford. What confounds the PR set? The defiant, dissatisfied and well-informed consumer who refuses to be made compliant to the short-term ROI necessities of public-corp existence. When disenfranchised choose not to accept blame and project guilt in the social exchange, and surrender to the commodity rehabilitation programming of corp-soc systems, they annoy the entitled masters of the economy. One of the most bizarre features of the post-2007-8, as the Austerity (for the 99%, not those who caused the crisis through fraud and other criminal behavior, and just plain greed) regime was contrived and implemented from the top-down, was the drumbeat from elites chastising the victims. Even as banks, hedge funds, insurers, ratings agencies, co-opted bureaucrats, corrupted politicians, law dogs, academics/economists, captured journalists, ministers preaching on the godliness of wealth, and so many in the professional, “white collar” classes almost to a person got away with their part in the most massive bottom-2-top redistribution of goods and money in human history, the industrial mouthpieces from each sector explained to the pillaged classes that they would need to expect less, suffer more and not blame anyone for what “happened.” As if the scam was tantamount to weather.

"DIM TIM: Prince of Death"
Acrylic (Quin. Red-Gold) on Redwood
16" x 12"
2004
$1450

"Prince of Death" was painted during my Morris Graves studio residency. I think of these paintings as 4D allegories, and fictional representation, and also modular, consisting of elements that combine to establish compositions of infinite variety. The Cyclops has a sonic society/media eye, a timeline mouth, and his costume suggests an imaginary cinema, and I sometimes think of these as stills for yet-to-be-produced movies, or other-dimensional already-produced movies.

In a way it is unfortunate that our perceptual capacity is enlarged to the extent that simple, 2D caricature is not as viscerally gratifying as it has been in the past. Possibly one upside from the threat of an era for Chinese global conquest is a retooling of 2D practice. In fact, the phenomenon has been happening since the East and West “opened up” to each other over the past several centuries. The Postwar tech revolution in Asia, to which so much manufacturing has been relocated - to destroy the labor movement in Europe and America and enrich the Geek-plutocracy and the stock exchanges/investors they prop up - has produced a collateral effect. The aesthetics and design principles of the Orient have of course migrated to and saturated computer-/device-rooted, networked New Media. What does that mean? It is as stupendous moment for contemporary art, for one thing, and this reflects the phenomenon in Postwar Europe, especially Germany, where art, particularly painting, uncorked and a remarkable blossoming occurred. Corporate global syndicates, a few consumptive governments, and all the new international millionaires and billionaires would love to co-opt the artsy upside to World War, mass population displacement, and the technologies attaching. What do they really deserve? If one studies the era at depth, carefully, it becomes obvious that the rich bastard classes derived enormous, even unimaginable wealth, prestige and reproductive power in all the usual ways: through extraction and exploitation, predatory lending, fraudulent and deceptive practices, opportunism, graft, grift and cons, economic blackmail, third-party force; basically stealing and cheating. See William K. Black for a sober perspective. The fix was in.

"Unconditioned Line (Wovenform) #7"
Acrylic on Metallum
54" x 72"
2004
$9500

"Unconditioned Line #7" was created during my Riverwind LLC residency, for which I BETA tested the amazing and diverse selection of Metallum fabrics for artistic purposes. Ultimately, I settled on a few applications, and the Tuttle-inspired intertwining, 4D-inferring linear forms. UC(WF) #7 was first exhibited at "Bar Codes, Rituals + Subliminal Tapes" and in 2005 at the Pump Project "Overflow Show."

The conceit of ‘programmable matter” in the Bill and Melinda Gates constellation of global interventions is intertwined with speculative venture investment in a global vision in sharp divergence from the pre-Crash 2007 conception of humanity and our modes of social organization. The tech-takeaway in the aftermath of Y2K and the tech-bubble bursting, and many other temporary upheavals and imaginary catastrophes in the field, must be that no monopoly-busting regulator, no sensible opposition, no accounting measure, will dent the veneer of the FUTURE. Yet, impossibly, politicians like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and US House Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez are coming out, calling for the breaking up of Big 5 tech. Europe implemented substantive privacy regimes for American-based internet companies, although corporate media muffled the importance of these rulings. The power to control messaging on issues affecting the operations of Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Netflix and Facebook is not complete, obviously, and the capacity to restrain FAANG domination still exists. The movement toward a global resistance to all manifestations of international supremacist plutocracy is iterative. It does not appear with the emergence of any particular technology. Nano-, algo-, bio-tech, IoT, AI, Cloud, Big Data and so on all are part of a dimensional system that in unequally delivered to the world it affects. The technological conquest of everything presupposes the neo-Conquistador replacing the thing with nothing, then taking the thing, while everyone (except the conqueror) is absorbed by nothing. So far the plan is working 99% of the time, almost everytime.

Ted Gevrez
"Mariachis de la Muerte"
Mixed Media on Canvas
36" x 16"
1990 [?]
NFS

"Red" Ted Gevrez was an outsider artist (literally), who homesteaded on Monte Luna, overlooking Santa Fe. He was a Vietnam vet and the man who took me to my first 12-Step meeting, on a blue moon night. I have many Red Ted tales. He was a noted City Different character for years, marching around Santa Fe, leading an endlessly variable pack of dogs, hauling gallons of water, dumpster diving, hanging out on the Plaza, at open-air weekend art fairs by the Chapel at Loretto, on street corners or under the Agua Fria bridge. I owe this man my life, and I love this painting. I miss his smile of few teeth and endless string of mostly awful jokes, which made me laugh until my face hurt, when I first got sober. I have no idea where he is today, or what he is doing, but I hope he is well and wish him the very best.

We are by necessity predisposed to fall backwards into the “sharing economy.” The Obama “HOPE” PR message and the propaganda for social media as a one-way wealth. Understanding a thing as a gift is essential to accepting art on its own terms. The debasement of “sharing” is possible within the economy of dereliction, but the amputation of sharing from human society causes circular devastation with certainty. To rationalize the purposeful dejection of humanity is to posit madness as an article of exchange. The permeability of the democratic social fabric, a feature inherent in free society for free exchange, can be exploited. The protocols of exploitation by now are well defined, proven in fact. The effects are demonstrably scalable. A challenge to the exploiter must be mounted to defend freedom. The successful confusion of cause and reflection ensures the agent of exploitation will succeed. The diligence of the citizen to soberly assess the condition of freedom is a responsibility both personal and collective. The imperative of art is its gift as freedom of expression, consisting of elements for the individual and of the commons. Art is made of things. It is made of elements like cadmium. Art’s mediums are water, oil, plastic polymer, etc. Other substances that make art art are clay, stone, wood, cotton or linen. Anyway, the art object is made of things, which make it the thing it is, and a human being or group of us are the medium that make the art thing, too. The thing art is irrelevant without more people to receive art, but this reception is not a taking. To experience art is to receive freedom in the modality of gift giving and reception.

"013Topo"
Mixed Media on Board
13 3/4" x 12"
2006
$1100

"013Topo" represents hybrid analog/digital processes, combining print, paint and plastic. The "color" of the Underpainting series is a subtle mix of metallics, glazes and tints, plus poly-media, more of a sensation than hue. "013Topo" appears in the early post-QuinRG phase. The Underpainting series was an MFA project at CGU. These selection (013+014) have never been exhibited.

To attribute an energy dynamic to art imprints the thing with poetics. The danger of associating poetry and art arises from the compulsion of the Word in any configuration. That is, until 4D fiction is established and comprehended. The inculcation of form by contextual representation is metaphorical. Idealism is a priori a rebuttal of existence in the present. Poetry does not have to be ideological to indoctrinate a thing, because language will do that for poetry and the poet. Command in language is a state of overturned being. The surrender of freedom to language argues against any Manifesto that dictates freedom to the reader. A fair hearing for free expression is impossible in, for example, English. However, humanity exists til now in the exercise of the freedom to attempt freedom by all means available. Language, even the Word of God, and man is not god, is bereft of freedom, except within God, and so one must wonder whether the devotion of the person to any god is fictional. A unitary god, a single God, is as much a useful design fiction as divine function for linear man. The polytheistic pantheon is a collective extrapolation of the personal experience of a god in man. Yet man must learn to pray, and is at his best when he prays to be free. This is the prayer that gives art a divinity that can extend to the viewer a sense of self within holiness, a perceptual clue to wholeness. A universe composed of finitude is still a Power of 1.

"014Topo"
Mixed Media on Board
13 3/4" x 12"
2006
$1100

"014Topo" represents hybrid analog/digital processes, combining print, paint and plastic. The "color" of the Underpainting series is a subtle mix of metallics, glazes and tints, plus poly-media, more of a sensation than hue. "014Topo" appears in the early post-QuinRG phase. The Underpainting series was an MFA project at CGU. These selections (013+014) have never been exhibited.

In the spirit of the art that connects binary creation to the geometry of the visible universe we can discover a link to things of every kind. The urge to define is a perfunctory action preceding salvation in obliteration. The imprisonment of choice isolates the inhabited body from it habitat. The environment for choice is the universe of all choice, which is a form of freedom of imagination, which precedes formal expressive freedom, if not selfless exultation. All creation in itself is the object of joyful man. Expressively complex, people through each other and ourselves diversify the means of expression, without exhausting the remedies for experience associated with pain, such as grief. The dimensional nature of expression is formed from the connection of events to things. The thing for humanity is art, and art is dimensional. The object has dumb measurements. The thing is intelligent before it is labeled and numbered, and its intelligence is contained in the parameters of it integrated freedoms. I am free to move in my car on an American highway, only as long as I have a drivers’ license, am not transporting anything illegal, drive under the speed limit, observe traffic rules, and on, on and on. Gas is a limiting factor. The engine and other mechanical systems for operating my vehicle matter. Etc. Now, how free should I feel, in my car? Freedom of imagination, freedom of expression - am I measuring these extensions of myself? If I am, does a measurement of freedom itself reveal or explain how free I am in my existence, personal and collective? More to the point: If I were truly free, what would I imagine; and what would I express? An artist must ask these questions every day, and his art should serve to answer these questions, for today.

"'DEATH' Is a Word [Dancing]"
Charcoal, Quin. Red-Gold, Oil Pen on Redwood
17" x 15" x 2"
2004
$2100

Created during Morris Graves Studio Residency and exhibited in "Bar Codes + Rituals + Subliminal Tapes. Ballerina figure (Molly) was drawn from photo data session hosted by Beckley Dance Theatre School (2003). "DEATH is a Word" was exhibited in "Barcodes, Rituals + Subliminal Tapes," in AFHG/Eureka, a program sponsored by Morris Graves Foundation, Ink People Center for the Arts and Riverwind LLC.

I watched Pork Chop Hill last night on Netflix or Amazon Prime. My Uncle Bob was a Korean War veteran, who saw combat duty in the actual field in and around the stylized scenario depicted in the film. Gregory Peck, Robert Blake, Martin Landau, George Peppard, Rip Torn, Harry Guardino, Woody Strode, Gavin McLeod, Norman Fell and others establish an ensemble that performs eloquently in a modern war movie. The image of police action in Asia set the table for movies that followed, even for recent classics, like Saving Private Ryan. This morning I am merging the rant of Chris Hedges, discussed above, and Pork Chop Hill. The memory of my relative, who received full military honors at his funeral and was quietly proud of his service toward the end of his life, colored my viewing of the movie and the Hedges’ essay. Without amplifying the statement, I will mention that in the past few weeks, two female elders in my circles of family and tribal affiliations passed away, after long, productive lives. Both women were impressive in their own ways. They lived on opposite ends of the North American continent, Jean and Jan, but they were bound invisibly. They belonged to a generation of people born a century or so ago, who witnessed radical changes in the world. The American Century is a media meme, and like every fiction, hovers over truth like the blade of a thresher. Which does nothing to diminish the reality that appeared and is disappearing with the passing of each participant. We are all moments. The moment, with few exceptions, is a thing, of which there is no such thing.

"Morris Graves' Bottle #3"
Acrylic (QR-G) on Redwood
15" x 12"
2004
$1450

During my studio residency at MGF, I was privileged to use the same bottles Graves incorporated into his iconic still life compositions. This is one of the paintings on redwood milled from dead and downed trees on the MG compound premises by Robert Yarber that was originally exhibited in "Homage" and "Barcodes, Rituals + Subliminal Tapes."

One of the first vinyl records I listened to with enthusiasm, of my own volition, was Jim Croce’s Photographs & Memories: His Greatest Hits. “Time in a Bottle” is one of the songs that moved me as a young man, albeit one who had no real clue about the content of Croce’s musical, lyrical reflection on love, memory and time. Painting in Morris Graves studio shortly after he died, I produced a series of still life paintings, using the bottles I found in the studio, which Graves had used in his own iconic paintings. An alcoholic has specific associations with The Bottle. In a warlike Civilization every aspect of humanity is infected or at least inflected by the presence of war, unless one endeavors specifically to ban the reference in the projection. That undertaking is far less daunting that one might imagine. The appeal of Jeff Koons owes much to his ejection of war from his production and persona. I can see how some of the men and women who perceive the world, industrial relations, Civilization, historical and chronological time, material exchange, romance and sex, bodily sustenance, Nature, really all things, as facets and dimensions of interlocking warfare. Warfare is stylized conflict, and the 20th Century marked the end of war style over substance. Vietnam, the atom bomb, the trenches of WWI combined dissemble any quaint idea of war. Style requires quaint ideas, which serve the mediocrity of tyrants usually, in everything they attend but tyranny. The notional value of war was lost in its derivatives, to put it the earliest phrasing of the 21st Century.

Two Windows in a West Virginia Church"
Digital Print on Archival Paper [A/P]
13" x 19"
2000-2008
$1250

The photo data sourced for "Two Windows" was shot during pre-production for "SEAM01" in 2001. John Guider and I photographed the area around my hometown Beckley, WV, with my parents often serving as field guides. This print shows the digital processing I applied like a patina to a variety of photo series in my catalog. The original 35mm black and white photograph is scanned from the contact sheet, mechanically/digitally enlarged using my own techniques, then output on my Epson printer.

Should the destruction of realism for war be celebrated? If one is a pacifist, one has an interest in going to war with war. The tactical killing of peace is forever a pastime of the warlord, and so tit for tat. What the bigger picture reveals however is that virtuality is destroying realism across a spectrum of human endeavor. Virtual war displaces War and replaces it with a simulation, which then evolves into simulacra. The endgame is nothing. End program. The future of Singularity is intertwined with wars past. The resonance of the heroism of soldiers in battle is located in the secret embrace of lovers forever, in human time, if not universal time, which for us is unknowable, or fictional. The power to kill another person and the profound bio-synchronicity of romantic love situate as experiential nodes of man, and the fictional narrative people compose for themselves. The mashup of war and love only makes sense in a 4D, beyond binary, configuration. Within the dimensionist continuum we find other meaningful components for human life: sickness and health, birth and death, gathering and ritual, and more, throughout which we want music, poems and art in ample supply. The system of living for humans is crumbling now, and our world seems to fall apart simultaneously. Is this real life? Will virtual robber barons succeed at displacing and replacing religion, kings and queens, magic, of which the greatest is love? Will God be virtual? Will man in his dream machine forget to dream? Who will engineer this perceptual takeover? We already know who would like to, and we have seen the beginnings of virtual art, and it is heinous and ugly to the keen eye, because it is fundamentally inhuman(e).

"EVOIL"
Mixed Media and Silver Tape on Canvas
12" x 9"
2005
$975

"EVOIL" was created during my APFCW Austin production. The work was in part funded by St. Edward's University. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars, campaigns, interventions, occupations - however you characterize those actions - were in full swing, and the financial crisis was just over the horizon. I explicitly integrated my political resistance to the status quo into the content of my exhibits. I did so in the Texan state capitol city (Austin), where George W. Bush had been governor, prior to his election to the US Presidency. I planted conversation-starters throughout the shows.

In Transthesis, or Notes on Dimensional Time, I commented on hara-kiri, or seppuku, in response to a Peter Drucker essay on Japanese art and society. The antique version of self-disembowelment for the Japanese died with the soldiers in the caves of Iwo Jima, who blew themselves up, instead of surrendering to Marines, who may or may not have been inclined to accept surrender under the circumstances. Now that we are all friends and allies, and the dual global-strategic menace of a China-Russia alliance absorbs the low-energy Axis of Evil, we may wish to revisit the concept of duty to the cause, and its inverse, the ritualistic suicide as mechanism of resolution for failure to successfully carry out the assigned duty. In such an end the cause is abandoned and left to the more qualified. At least the self-killing in that social organizational device is redemptive of honor. Honor is a fictional narrative in war, and love also (pertaining to coupling rights, social offense, and whatnot). At the core of the fiction is the complex binary configuration, War upon Oneself. “An Army of One” was the slogan that replaced “Be All You Can Be” and was in short order replaced by “Army Strong.” The rate of veteran suicide in the aftermath of the Army of One era is tragic. The Walter Reed Scandal during the Bush (W) administration and continuing through the Obama administration, presumably to the present, illustrates the neglect with which corrupt political elites perceive and treat the nation’s heroes. The shift to accelerated for-profit or privatized national under the fanatical neo-cons and neo-libs, since selective service was sent into political remission, has been long-term disastrous for America on many levels. The same can be said for the health care and penal systems, local to federal policing, education, sports, art and more. Business has become suicidal. The artificial personhood doesn’t care if you kill yourself. It’s only interest is in whether it makes or loses money in your demise, productivity stats aside.

"Drift #1"
Banjo, Column Base, Sand, Chain, Mixed Media Sculptural Assembly, Carved Rhino, Lead-wrapped Wood
Variable Dimensions
2019
$3400

"Drift #1" is the first in a series of temporary and permanent 4D objects. The title is co-opted from local gillnet fisher lingo, and from theory addressing multivalent socio-technological developments in the past century+, and their effects on attention, physical movement, research/analysis and more. The banjo was a gift from one of the guys at Shady Tree Studios (Austin, 2005). The carved Rhino was a gift for my son Will in Santa Fe 23 years ago.

Doing research for Post-Storage, I clicked on a link to an obituary page on a funeral home website. The actual location is Deridder, in western Louisiana, serving the residents of Beauregard Parish, not far from Texas and Lake Charles. The Myers Colonial Funeral Home and Crematorium site belongs to World Wide Web era that is dear to my heart. The shift from old to new media is most compelling on portals like Myers’, which demonstrate democratic potential in networked computing and communications. Another more recent instance I am proud to cite is The Memorial Day Foundation, whose executive director is my dear friend and coffee pal, Paul D’Elia. To upgrade memorializing our dead we can effectively, inexpensively keep databases that are easily and quickly accessible through logical forms that are excellent refinements from early versions. Many of them look pretty. Search engines are much advanced. The design options for presenting lists of image + text informatics now is practically unlimited! The croud-sourced evolution of content + context is one of the most impressive stories of the early days of personal computing, and outside specialized channels, rarely gets the deserved attention. The Attention Economy ensures this outcome. One of the features of the old web, that reveals it is still a functional ecosystem, like American democracy (both endangered) is the “Zombie” default for abandoned or neglected portals. By now I would guess there have been billions of sites built and left unattended, like graves of virtual nomads. Then there are long-sustained and therefore beloved sites like Wet Canvas, where people converge when virtual space gets too cold and lonely. Virtual Isolation in the ethereal wired world order is a soul destroyer. Survey the search engine results to find the husks of webmasters who fried and self-quarantined, never returning to their keyboards. (see Pi for a properly romantic and geekified representation of the progression ~ still fresh today).

"WOVENFORM: View from Kailea (Study)"
Ink on Acrylic [Q R-G] on Wood
4.5" x 5"
2005
$550

One of my best wovenforms. Judging from the design on the obverse, I initially created this study to use for imagining an installation. Kailea is my favorite Kauai beach. For some reason this image makes me think of whales in a pod playing.

On Kailea Beach I took my first nap as an adult. Technically, okay, that is not true. I actually napped in the passenger seat of the rental car, because I was just too paranoid to pass out in public. I videotaped late afternoon surf sessions there, featuring mostly young locals playing around on short boards. I body-whomped in all kinds of waves at Kailea. The lifeguards are absolutely outstanding. I saw them perform perfect rescues in very difficult conditions. I will always feel attraction at the thought of Kailea, which is prompted by the Name, on the obverse of my painting, and other sensations that exist in my experience, contained in my body at a cellular level, and in my memory, now facilitated by technology. Even if I can’t watch Kailea specifically, I can check out the Kauai shores through web-cams, 24/7/365. The streaming technology for surveillance is vastly improved. There are some side benefits. The same can be said for drones, for GPS. Surgical science has improved tremendously by America’s production of undeclared wars, post-911. So has extractive psychology, and logistical incarceration. Preventative criminology is a booming research and practical field, as are experiments in mass enforcement of doctrine and emotional push technology (see the Chinese Social Credit system and the Facebook scandal revealing scientific experiments on non-consenting users/subjects in 2014). At what point do we 99% demand that the thing (in this case we refer to the image falsely representing something) match its fictional text, context, subtext, and both be juxtaposed with the real thing? So people can choose between the two, and begin reforming circumstances to 4D existence and perception.

"Portrait of the Artist Bathing in Israel"
Inkjet on Archival Paper (Digital Image from 35mm Photo Data) [AP]
13" x 19" 
1984-2008
$1200

The original photograph was taken in (I think) Jerusalem or maybe Bethlehem. That's me in the tub. The digital re-treatment was applied during my MFA course at CGU, in the run-up to CONTENT at Yarger|Strauss. "Portrait" is included in one of the CONTENT portfolios.

The act of cleansing and purification is multivalent in human experience, but it is consistently present in our collective consciousness. Water, earth, air and fire are natural elements used in ceremonies for people to treat the maladies that afflict them. The ritual aspect extends the application of the healing to physical and non-physical or metaphysical aspects of our lives, both personal (private) and collective (public). The introduction of growing things to the procedure in a way enables a cleansing ceremony to remain contemporary. The sharing of prayers in a group setting can bring home the details of the troubles one faces, and facilitate the deployment of specific protocols for releasing or expelling the thing that causes disharmony, internally and/or externally. I prefer ritual communities in which no money is formally exchanged, which have no pay-to-play component, in which the leader is a trusted servant with no means to enrich him- or herself by way of the community of persons that leader serves. I love places like hot springs, ocean pools, and other special natural places for healing. Usually people have enjoyed the benefits of such places for a long time, and those benefits are widely understood, a first order common knowledge. The underpinning of the latest vestiture for the Commons is a very human urge to heal what is broken inside us. The expression of that urge does not necessarily reflect its other, natural manifestations. One shouldn’t expect the Yellow Vests to resemble a purifying Puja, except in structural, abstract analysis. Why? The cause of the malady, the disharmony, the Mouvement des gilets jaunes attempt to remedy has an artificial cause.

"Rock the Casbah (Red)" [Edition: 70/125]
Screenprint on Paper, Signed by Artist
24" x 18"

SOLD

During AFHGC, I used to visit Shepard's Gallery and shop fairly frequently. The openings and parties they threw at the Sunset location drew hordes, with long lines to get into the events. Shepard and his family plus staff were very welcoming. This was before the Obama HOPE poster and the 2008 campaign and the mess that followed. I picked up the print at the gallery. The only time it ("Rock the Casbah #70) has been out of the original tube is for the taking of this picture.

POST-STORAGE [Part 2]

In February 2019 we closed the storage units we had occupied in Upland, California, since 2006 or -7, filled a 26’ box truck with the contents, drove that vehicle through the mountain passes of Cali and Oregon in the midst of winter, and unloaded everything into our Astoria home. The POST-STORAGE essay in three parts samples the art that had been sequestered in those four containers in the Inland Empire. They (the artworks) span more than three decades of my projects and production, including samples and artifacts from Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown, the Sneaky Pete thesis series, DddD, O1, CONTENT thesis series, A Prayer for Clean Water I - V + Overflow Show, and much more. The texts cover Dimensionist theoretical territory, current affairs and the artist’s shifting perspective that arrives post-50 (almost 55). Not least in the mix is the re-contextualization of art, text and life happening in the novel (to us) Northwest Coast environment. The Astorias of Queens and Oregon are separated by the American continent. What does that distance mean, post-Internet?

"Black 01 Vinyl"
Adhesive Vinyl on Vinyl Record
9.75" in diameter
2001
$450

One of the Vinyl on Vinyl series produced for Heartless01, "Black 01 Vinyl" picked up a crack somewhere along the way. These discs referenced the amazing music recorded for our collective 01 projects in Nashville. In installations, the 01 vinyls operated visually in tandem with the environmental vinyl 01 sticker grids and other applications on objects (e.g., monitors, canvas, books, etc.) to dissolve encompassing architecture and produce new ontology for the elements in our 4D arrays, both virtual and analog, in new and traditional media.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but the art industry is only one among many industries. Artists really ought not take it personally, when our portion of the industrial topology is twisted to the whims of the super-wealthy. Our thing is being decimated and distorted, just as so many venerable disciplines, crafts and stable economies are. I am comforted by the understanding that American society is fundamentally revolutionary, and the means by which the ugly, mediocre, inhumane, tyrannical, inequitable status quo can be upended is built into our system. Historically, the strongest rebels among us fit into demographics that today are under relentless, all-directional assault. A half-century ago, the inbred, cross-eyed, soft-hand, filthy, antisocial international super-rich correctly analyzed their enemies and developed short- and long-range strategies and tactics to re-instate their domination of humanity, which was disrupted temporarily in the 20th Century.

"Jumper"
Ink and Acrylic (Quin. Red/Gold) on Museum Board
29" x 20"
2006
$1800

"Jumper" was originally presented at AFHGC, using magnets to affix the painting to the wall. The image is derived either from Century of War or Dr. McLean's Green Beret yearbook (can't remember which).

The artificial, by-design, horrific malevolent effects the 1%er beasts have unleashed upon their fellows include waves of elegantly packaged addiction, distraction, dislocation, aggression, swelling into a perfect storm of psychophrenia. The opportunism of the elites is a product of training, alliances, dehumanization and compound resources. The wealthiest can afford to test 1000 losing propositions to find the one that best serves their (the 1%) prurient, selfish and usually stupid purposes. The galling extent to which an unregulated aristocrat can induce chaos on well-organized, high-functioning community is anecdotally apparent to any analyst willing to witness the phenomenon. The Presidency of Donald Trump is a case study, but only one of hundreds. The Mayoral run of Michael Bloomberg present another instance, of a different flavor, which is true across the globe. For every Macron there is a Carlos Slim. The technocrats and plutocrats meet in Davos and Bilderberg summits, or informally wherever they like, to map the future they prefer and to shape that future with all the devices unimaginable wealth and power affords its masters. What the rest of us must recognize is that they exist by our collective permission, absent our individual capacity in most cases to counteract their synthetic will.

"RED ROVER"
Unique Digital Print Mounted on Foam Core
24" x 16"
2000
$300

This is Destination Gallery at First Union Tower interior signage for Todd Greene's "Red Rover" exhibit. I was the gallery director and liaison with TIAA-CREF and CB Richard Ellis. I also designed all marketing materials for the gallery program, which included posters, banners and invitations. Plus more. We had a great run.

What are the 4D tools that activate effective creative movement? First is convolution. The woven form in martial applications is simultaneously offensive and defensive, conducive to the sequential application of smothering combinations by a strong practitioner on her opponent. The second is complexity. Technical variation adds to the confusion of the opponent, seeking to settle into a binary mode of engagement, governed by rules that improve the players odds. The feint is a type of disrupting syncopation in percussive flurries that can be utilized, for instance, to set up decisive blows. The third is sense of duration, which expresses as endurance, or tenacity. The nature of Event determines that those who excel at conforming to the contemporary are best situated to create useful derivation. The responsiveness of the player to variations in intensity of action will be important to the outcome of any match. There are others, but the key factor to remember is the fragility of hybrid virtual and analog combinations in any 4D scenario.

"New Signal Flag"
Adhesive Vinyl on Vinyl
8" x 10"
2001
$480

The "New Signal Flag" series was originally exhibited in SEAM01 at Jerry Dale McFadden's The Attic Gallery (TAG) in Nashville. The electron microscopy elements were contributed by gallerist and collector Susan Tinney. The vinyl substrate was cut from a rejected banner swooped from one of the printers I worked with regularly.

Scalable vision is critical in 4D configurations, and the concept is formally mechanical. The visible is directional only to the viewer whose optical system is dictated by the vicissitudes of reception quality. Blur is an effect, and a symptom. When we look at the universe, do we see the universe or ourselves? The more refined one’s vision becomes, the more likely that the interpretive engine for one’s senses has created a universe of its own. The parallel consciousness of existence proposes a simultaneous continuum for the generation of stimuli and the logic of the witness. To see is to think about the seen thing, and then to feel one way or another about it. The order of unfolding interpretation places awareness in the time medium. Immediately, the alignment of content to context to consciousness commences. Absent a fourth element for synthesis, the triangulation of phenomenon with sensual focus is fictional. The synthetic features of mind and spirit as in the concept (Geistes) establishes inference as a rationalizing dynamic for harmonization in multi-valent phenomena.

"Diane"
Unique Digital Print from Photoshop Enhanced 35mm B/W Photo (Scanned Contact Sheet)
19" x 13"
2008

$1200 "Diane" was photographed in my Chestnut Square studio in Nashville in 2000 or -01. The print was output in 2008 for CONTENT, my solo exhibit at Yarger|Strauss Contemporary in Beverly Hills.

The flesh is the mediator between impression and impulse. Our physicality creates the urgency of thought, relative to the finite and infinite, our bodily nemesis, our intellectual liberator. Mortality for art is the platform for spectral expression. The organic features of time provision all manner of release. Orgasm is as real as any experience, but the motivation to experience orgasm is visual for the artist. The prejudice of the non-artist toward to art and artist arises from envy of the artistic eye in those for whom aesthetic vision remains mysterious, alien, dangerous, weird, crazy, etc. Mostly, it is a fear that is less-than 4D in its particulars, and it is bound to competition for survival, to reproduce. In short, it is the same pulsing fear that drives the !% to crush the freedom of art and artist. They (the plutocracy) as a class demonstrate a powerful collective compulsion to command and control art and culture, about which they understand practically nothing. The relations between art and the plutocrat are typical of all relations by which the super-powerful seek to define themselves, generation to generation. The 1% remain the most unfortunate subject of any artistic enterprise. Worse, their insecurity and frequent lack of character and internal or spiritual distinction condemns their portraits to history’s dumpster. Art’s canonical focus on the tyrants of the past thousand+ years (in portraiture, especially) can be described as accidental humor, as slapstick. Banksy certainly has proved this point.

"Wovenform"
Ink on Handmade Paper
9" x 11"
2008
$975

"Wovenform" was a quick sketch created in pre-production for "CONTENT" at Yarger|Strauss, initially as visual data for digital animation and still image processing. It was not exhibited in that show.

The flattening of remembrance into a disc (like a CD or DVD) is a profound recursion. Siphoning off mass vitality and locating it in a Cloud is a profound dispersion. The decoupling of virtual production from objects and privacy (as in possession) is as traumatic as the invention and subsequent convention of intellectual property. These are civic problems disguised as tech-based solutions. These are camouflaged economic redistribution policies. These are extensions of Master-Slave or -Servant programs. Weaving the facts and fictions of things into not-things is the 4D movement in a nutshell. Viewed through a Dimensionist lens, the baffling succession of frustrating failures in all but a few segments of Civilization over the past four decades are no longer baffling. Not that surety is itself the point ~ it most definitely is not. The point is accuracy, and its second point is precision, and its third point is exactitude. Beyond the three points, the rest is estimation. The elimination of ambiguity in nature is the semblance permanence.

"Pattern Print"
Digital Print on Canvas
Portfolio of 30 Unique Patterns
13" x 19"
2008
$1200

We visited Cape Disappointment today, after lunching at Captain Bob’s in Long Beach, Washington. I am bemused that at the culmination of Manifest Destiny is the Dismal Niche and Cape Disappointment. Poor Lewis and Clark, discovering so much only to find a grim end of the trail. “Ocian in view! O! the joy!” ~ Okay, maybe not all bad, but to inspect the strange history of adventure and what became of the adventurers is once more to unravel the fictions we imagine when we hear names and numbers (dates). It is the exercise (exorcism) of memoranda. Since Trump was elected President - and maybe forever - we see efforts to apply reforms to historical narratives. I think Kantian distaste is behind the urge. The art world is a flashpoint for revisionism. MoMA is embarked on quest to abolish provenance, within curatorial practice, except as it bears on the valuation of individual pieces with substantial donors attached. The market has defeated its public enemy at the pinnacle of ivory tower culture. We can look for patterns now where they are meaningless, frivolous and (con-)temporary. The anchor of non-fiction is no longer connected to the floor of the watery depths of culture. Identity is the mirror of flux, and that basic configuration will serve as the boring novelty of our visual lives. The dismantling of difference is accelerating.

"Thunder Dreamer"
Mixed Media on Canvas
12" x 12"
2006
$1800

The shock of the new is hardly shocking at all. The old is shocking. The ancient is on balance a source of fictional terror, and a resource for extraction and exploitation, especially for marketing purposes. Once this phase exhausts its momentum and all derivatives dissolve under the weight of loss of commonwealth, the orgy of present-fucking will re-commence. Art will find NOW and the happening will resume. The priceless moment will convert fashion to fusion and the simple stick and rock-based computing will relieve the pressure in Civilization. The super-rich are sensitive to the hatred of everyone else, which they misconstrue as envy. The ultra-wealthy want to be free to loathe and fear everything, anything, everyone, anyone. They hate to be rejected, despised, to be hunted and collectivized on any terms other than their own. Of course I am generalizing. This is the trick of class warfare. Because the international oligarchy consists of listed names and numbers, the member of that non-club cabal feel justified in determining cartoonish individualistic definitions of themselves. It is hopeless to ask these brats to stop making fetishes to and of themselves and the fictions they embrace to rationalize their existence, which is absolutely irrational.

"Water" + "Torture Scene"
Acrylic (Quin. Red/Gold), Copper, Die Cut Foil Print Artifact, Adhesive Print
12" x 9" (Each)
$1375 (Each)

The Secret Market series originally appeared in "A Prayer for Clean Water" at St. Edward's University in Austin. I created many small adhesive prints for the exhibit cycle. Some were affixed to and integrated into artworks, as in the Abu Ghraib "Torture Scene." Others were distributed through the presentation space, as in "Overflow Show" at Pump Project.

[VIEWS 1 & 2]

Does anyone remember the term attention span? The monopoly media have finally abandoned the bitchy refrain of condemnation toward citizens who were failing to maintain focus on important developments over time. The hypocrisy of the press is its specialty. The disappearance of freedom of the press behind paywalls under the pretense of industrial trending coincides with yellow headlines about a wall on our southern border. Respectable journalistic standards fall like bowling pins as the for-profit model serves the super-rich, corporate syndicates and the management of their affairs. Papers and news broadcasts have emerged as propaganda vehicles, even as their big stories bray incessantly about corruption of the political discourse by foreign players. What happened to Puerto Rico? Did anyone actually figure out what the reason was for the mass shooting in Las Vegas, or any of the many others? Is there a plan for resolving America’s conflicts (erm, wars, campaigns, etc.) in the Middle East? Is anyone going to condemn Israel for its outrageous border slaughters? Or Saudi Arabia’s assassination of a well-known journalist? Will anyone go to prison for Flint? Or the BP oil spill? Or the “London Whale” fiasco? Why aren’t the CEOs of the huge Wall Street banks and the Chairmen of the Fed and the Treasury appointees who crashed the economy in 2007-8 in prison? Why did Obama all the sudden decide America had to look forward, not backward. Why has justice been thrown under the bus?

"Invocations (Linda)"
Photograph (Framed)
44" x 31"
2001
$3300

"Invocations was shot in 2000 at my Belcourt (Nashville) studio, and originally exhibited at Cumberland Gallery in a summer group show. The image data from the "Linda" series was used in the feature-length animation "FALL," which was pre-produced in West Virginia in and completed during the Eureka! residency (2002-4). The inscription indicates the print is 1/25, but this print is actually unique. I really like the effect autoportrait reflection combining with the picture in my crap iPhone documentation.

It’s not that we stopped paying attention, it’s that the out-of-control corruption of America by corporate syndicates and their owners has not been punished. The shittiest of our fellows continue to get away with it. They are trotted out into the NY Times or CNN or WSJ and permitted the opportunity to congratulate themselves, once again. The situation has reached critical mass, at least in France, at least for a minute. One can only hope and pray that the mad killers among us will begin to target those who really deserve gory endings. The Coast Guard lieutenant accused of plotting mayhem is the latest in a string of incidents that suggest the lid could blow off the pot anytime. Obviously, the projection of information into media stream by the super-rich and their hacks will not include images and stories of the wealthy being murdered, maimed, convicted, poisoned, disenfranchised, thrown in the street, kicked out of all the prestigious institutions and academies to which they and their children belong, tortured, assassinated, frog-walked by cops, beaten with nightsticks on their lawns, ass-fucked in prisons by guards and inmates, stripped of all awards, and so on. These measures are off-limits, unspeakable, even as fictions that might inspire uprising and reversal of the coup, the most massive redistribution of wealth in history. Which is why we must reserve the right to imagine what we want, and share it with our fellow citizens, for the purpose of democratic, constitutionally legitimate mobilization.

"She Blew My Mind Guy"
Acrylic and Ink on Paper
30" x 22"
1998
$3400

"She Blew My Mind Guy" originally was exhibited in "The Embrace" at Third Coast Clay in Nashville. During the month-long residency at TCC I produced almost 100 ceramic paintings and the series of works on paper.

The eruption of passion is creative, if not necessarily artistic. The political embodies a specific urgency that is the mesh of the human condition and its will to commune. I’m thinking of you, Badiou! The nullification of the political leaves the desire for collective expression in a fallow state. The desertion of the demos by its representation commits the imagination to servitude of and for the ungoverned, which is not (whatever Ayn Rand might have thought) the same as the free. Fortunately we have precedence, through which we can dismiss the stupid and cynical proclamations of trolls and punks of the super-class. To assign the scale of causation with applicable value is the prime function of democracy, for all. Artists and a few other top-level free expressionists get extra protection in the democratic scheme, because we get taken out first, whenever the shitheads bust a move. You know things are gnarly when suicide is epidemic, but the times call for revolution when suicide for target demographics are encouraged, assisted and romanticized. Taking myself out is not a funny way to describe going to dinner and movie alone, in the revolutionary moment.

"Abstraction Forms Thought #4" [Written Word/Rarefied Air]
Acrylic and Ink on Wood (Framed)
14" x 11"
1995
$1600

This painting of Dim Tim, here a Cyclops in a business suit posing with his absent son, was created in 1995. The ink finish was added in 1999, when the piece was included in "Sirens + Conflagrations" at the Frist contemporary art installation spaces (stables) at Cheekwood Museum in Nashville.

I believe it is impossible to understand what is happening today in America without acknowledging the impact of the Divorce Industry on the social fabric of the nation. The USA has invisibly become a fatherless territory. The resurrection of ideologies that deserve to be dormant is one feature of the social disintegration wrought my social engineering through Family Court. The insidious influence of enforced, extraconstitutional policy adjudicated in the shadow landscape of conference rooms, mediator offices, artless courtrooms and other hideous locations is another of the unspeakable facts of American common life. The despair precipitated by the Divorce Industry is expressed in countless episodes of carnage. Family Law remedies are the worst sort, the kind that destroy the sufferer to cure her. The toxic sludge of gross institutional negligence oozing from Family Court policies and jurisdictions is consuming the conscience of our people. It weakens the population to the extent that parasitic tyrants can feast upon the still-living carcass of the Republic. The financial sector could never execute its awful encroachment into our civil society, absent the intervention of divorce practice on the soul of America.

Lanark / A Life in 4 Books, by Alisdair Gray

The smart phone is a murdered of literature and many projects of post-Church and -King free society. The novel became a liberated form through the American revolution, and despots fear it. The fatwa against Rushdie was my generation’s heads-up that the New World (GAG) Order was present and accounted for, even if it now sported checkered headware in certain regions. The top-down assault on the Arts and Humanities is always a precursor of the coup. I recently heard a recounting on radio of the Roosevelt-enabled regime change in mid-Century Iran. It is worth thinking about his views on CIA intervention in Guatamala and what is happening in Venezuela now. The public has as much chance of discovering truth in the media as it has scoring the correct ticket in the MEGA millions lottery. The armies of operatives whose primary task daily it is to shape the image of everything we consume from the information industry must be fed, and their supper is our liberty. I’m looking at you, Jeff Zucker! The evil fostered in the corporate boardrooms of media conglomerates is outperformed only in those of the corporate C-Class offices of banking and energy conglomerates. Their collective destructive power on democracy should make them Public Enemy #1, if we the people actually took seriously the legalism that these corporations are actually people. If they are people, and we accept this legal fiction, we must define them on the basis of their performance. They act criminally. Their intent is anti-democratic. Their agents are no more or less gangsters than the mobsters they fictionalize in the content with which they continuously poison our imaginations.

"Contemplation Lake"
by Tim Murphy
Oil on Canvas
10" x 8"
1995
NFS

Tim had a solo show at Destination Gallery at First Union Tower. Respect.

Another sacrifice made at the altar of consumption is contemplation. The desecration of nature is part and parcel of the scheme of the rich and powerful to destroy anything that threatens it. The planet itself is always frightening to the elite. The proliferation of unnatural practices in the field of science-enabled reproduction is a symptom of disharmony between man and his environment. The urge to bring forth new life, of course, is completely natural. In fact, there is nothing more natural. Yet the peddler of fictions Freud has had his way, post mortem, with the configuration of family. What Drucker and Hitler accomplished in the realms of private and public empire, Freud managed in the secret universe of the reproductive impulse. The nightmare of mechanical reproduction is extended from the boardroom to the battlefield to the bedroom, and if we consider Zucker and his ilk, into the imagination, the dream complex that renders our scripted, linear future from the present and past. One scene does not a parable make, except in the bitter, empty darkness of Godot. The broken promise of secular, king-less existence is that our free movement, thought, interrelations and love cannot be tolerated by the ogres, zombies and vampires of our disgusting Civilizations of origin. The international elites are leaving clawmarks in the skin of the world, as we proceed into a better life, a 4D universe, a time that is not counted in the eyes of those appointed by false gods.

"Big A Art (Wovenform)"
Ink, Graphite on Handmade Paper, Magnets, Lead-wrapped Wood
18" 12"
2006
$1800

"Big A Art (Wovenform)" was exhibited at Philip Slein Gallery in St. Louis, in a small 2007 exhibit featuring NY Artists (even though I was living and working in LA at the time). You can see by the graphite outlines where the magnets are *supposed* to be placed.

Magnetism is the special force by which the powerful encroach on the fragile armature of human decency. It is the myth of the serpent and the divine virgin, and the cuckold. From the debasement of unity by the whispers of the seducer, who paints a picture of MORE, the heart of the addict is turned. The impeachment of innocence is the aim of every pimp. The business of pimping is not only the whore, but the john and the leverage produced by the seduction of the husband. The weakest link is not the genitalia. It is the optical, as its potency meets skin. The combination is tectonic, volcanic and close to complete. Completion must achieve unity, but that is not the question here. The Inquisition is the form for our subject. Can any art progress, survive without a true conjecture for reproduction? Benjamin was as much a fraud as Sigmund Freud and his family. Fin-de-siècle Vienna and, on the whole, Austria was an incubator of malignancy, the real ground zero for the 4th Reich. The longevity of that peculiar festering dream of conquest and decadence is astonishing. The elites thrive in its putrid juice.

"Stone"
Acrylic on Canvas
12" x 9"
2004
$950

"Stone" was painted at Morris Graves' studio in Loleta, CA, during my residency. I worked from still life arrangements routinely then. "Stone" was exhibited in "Homage," at the Eureka City Hall art space.

The ritual we crave is actually a quest. The Blue Highways-style Road Trip for this generation has been cock-blocked by the super-class, who wish to reserve the power of international unregulated, free movement for themselves. Their strategies of promoting open border policies around the democratic world only has to do with generating chaos, so that their (the oligarchy) can move at will across the globe. Their money and power and reproductive potential is their passport. The emergence of the art fair, auction, exhibition and periodic festival circuit over the past half century and its codification since 911, 2001 reflect the push and pull of globalism. The tendency of the privileged elite is to overindulge the spectacular, but to do so within the banal vestiges of gutted kingdoms and churches. The 21st Century 1% mob of course must hire specialists to invent the spectacle and prevent inclusivity to the extent possible under all circumstance. Pomp and Pop are no longer distinguishable. The overall effect is camouflage. Our next Road Trip is being carved out of Tibetan mountainsides by the Chinese Revolutionary Government, whose weapons are pointed at Jackson Hole, whose agents are employed by Boeing and whose art business on paper exceeds the West.

"Two Towers"
Digital Print on Poly Material, Grommets
48" x 48"
2001
$2800

The photo data for "Two Towers" is a circa 1984 pic of the Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh. This image is post-9/11 and the reference is direct, even if the actual chronology is blurry. "Two Towers" was originally exhibited at Polifilo (Nashville), in Culture01. *The wrinkles in the print are easily remedied.

If Baudrillard was right about 9/11 (and I believe he pretty much nailed it), then how exactly are we to remember the event, given that it never happened, really. I put it to you that we don’t need to remember it, and we never did, because we have art, and that is exactly what art is best at doing - remembering for us. The parsing or deconstruction of aggression against the monumental architecture of the World Trade Center, as it existed in 2001, has proved to be a fools’ errand. The cascade of idiotic reactions to that catastrophic act of violence continues. The momentum of stupidity should never be underestimated, especially when it can be exploited by clever creatures who thrive in dark worlds. Post-9/11 America still reels in the undertow of partial truth. The comparison to post-Hiroshima and -Nagasaki Japan is compelling. I would include in that comparison the knocking down of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan. If there ever was a reason to endlessly torment fanaticism in its ever-present, shifting form, the Bamiyan Buddhas’ fate defends it. The casualty of these massively violent conflagrations is learning itself. The student and the teacher are murdered by the instantaneous destruction of heroic construction. Only the extreme and radical nihilist, hater of generational transmission, rejoices at the sight of the mushroom cloud, the falling of the twin towers and the stone representation of enlightened being, of purified sentience. Whatever these structures contained, otherwise, does not sufficiently provide cause for the harm directed at our imagination.

"Mr. Gilliam"
Mixed Media on Canvas
48" x 36"
1985-6
$4200

"Mr. Gilliam" is one of the Sneaky Pete series of paintings, my undergrad art thesis. The figure is a suicide I knew in my youth. The Sneaky Petes were exhibited in the ISIS gallery and the landing outside the space in the Notre Dame art building during graduation week 1986.

The visible gives rise to conceptions for genres of violence. Language codifies violence, which one would think lessens the impact of violence, but does not. The visceral shock of violence is a sensation that activates a complex of responses, mental, physical, emotional and spiritual, not necessarily in the order. The degree to which violence affects a person over time changes with the person, and with factors to which the person is exposed. Violence can be normalized to some extent, rationalized and justified, to some extent. The strangeness of violence eclipses mindful order, or can. Discipline may be contrived to reduce the power of violence on the senses, but discipline can break, under pressure, by exhaustion, by states of mind, such as despair. Violence is not governable, even though much of civil society is devoted to the governance of violence, its definition, its redistribution, its stylization. Violence can be improved, on its own terms. It can be made directional, mastered as it were. Violence in art and dreams is an involved topic. Violence in sex and lovemaking is as common as it is perverse - it (violence) brings out the worst in a lover, over time.

* Yeah, I know the image is impaired by my reflection and the church facade. These STORAGE Series pics are starting to have a peculiar moda (style), yes? If you would prefer to see the original, DM me. In the meantime, check out this photoset of C+C documentation shot by Trey Mitchell outside Dreamworks SKG (Music Row), where we did a follow-up installation in I think 1998 or -9. We also exhibited a selection of C+C pieces at awesome, artist-friendly, post-production facility Ground Zero.

"2Gun Bullet" was first exhibited at Four Crows Gallery in Nashville in 1997. Charlotte Avant and I collaborated on the show, which was titled "COWBOYZ + COWGIRLZ." The production featured digital paintings (made in Painter and Photoshop), printed on canvas using early large format printers (Encad). Additional material was hand-painted on the printed matter. As far as I know, this was the first major artist project showcasing new digital print technology combined with traditional techniques. The 4D method is a core application, which I call "figure on abstraction." In this instance the abstract or immaterial content is all the stuff done or "created" on the computer. COWBOYZ presented layered content in themes: mythic American violence; Western heroes; the killer feminine; branding; neo-decorative elements; good versus bad guy binaries; cinematic reality versus realism; and so on. The framing and presentation was done by Ambiance in Nashville.

"2Gun Bullet"
[with Charlotte Avant]
Acrylic on Encad Inkjet on Canvas (Framed)
19" x 20"
1997

The Western as a formal construct for interpreting violence has graphic potential (see Hostiles). Of course, so few Americans work in the film business today, the orientation of almost every feature film is foreign. Is it time to push the anagram AINO? In 4D the name and number approach void, and lose meaning in the strain of distention. The dissolution of the American political class echoes the fate of the Western, even though the potential is not graphic, but metaphysical (see Vice). The surrealism of the financial sector combines the graphic and metaphysical, but as inversion, then spin (see The Big Short). The presence of English-American Bale in these films is notable, and why not mention Batman and American Psycho and American Hustle. The usage of actors in corporate movie-making is a subject I follow, as a Union Man. I admire the acting of Daniel Day Lewis, Tom Hardy, Bale, DiCaprio, but I often twitch at the Hollywood and New York City imaginary binary, and the art-hating that emanates along that binary’s meridians. Decidedly so, now that so many actors (and other entertainment world celebrities and personalities, e.g., musicians and comedians) pursue second careers as artists. I have a hard time not thinking of these rich people as dilettantes and scabs. I’m looking at you, Jim Carrey! Art will never conform to the constraints of film. The architecture of the public theater prevents this from happening, and the “home theater” is even less conducive to art. Cinematic collaboration is not comparable to artistic collaboration. Both, however, are co-operable in 4D+ media systems.

"Steers and Stripes" Tour Print
Digital Print on Poly Paper
Edition with Artist Proofs
40" x 3O"
2001
$2400

The management of Brooks & Dunn commissioned me to create digital art prints to gift the musicians, tour admins and personnel. The principals received framed large format prints and the support folks got small and medium format prints, framed and unframed. It was a big job. This print is a color proof for pre-production purposes.

The superhero hides in all the network configurations I frequent. I owe my aesthetics to comics, in the absence of daily accessibility to the world’s best art collections. Let’s freeze frame, and pay homage to the democratization of art via the World Wide Web! God bless the internet, artists! We can’t even begin to imagine the importance to future generations of the ease with which any kid with a connected device can browse the contents of museums and galleries around the world. Art will change in ways no one alive can predict. One of the only genuine contributions one make to the historical moment is percussion, the drumbeat, iterating/reiterating plus echoing/projecting the contention (objective & subjective) that art be what it is. A painting is art. A sculpture is art. The rest of what we are naming and framing as art is not art. It may be 4D, it may be really cool, it may be appreciated by the crowds the art world craves, but those art not worthy aesthetic criteria. Those are production concerns, trend markers, arts management issues, but they have nothing to do with art, which is nicely balanced between the Word and technique, which is to say, in a constant flow state supported by static form. Art is not architecture. Music is not art, it is one of the arts, and without question, a necessity for humanity. But so are racing, reproduction, eating and a bunch of other meaningful, valuable, rewarding pursuits and activities. We don’t have to call everything art, to assuage our egos, which are fictions anyway. Fake fictions, and very dumb.

"Made in USA"
Archery Target and Frame
36" x 39" x 16"
2019
$3500

I cannot recall where and when I picked up the enormous gauche frames, but they have been used in AFH exhibits since at least 2005. The used archery targets are a new find.

They Shall Not Grow Old deserves a word. The formality of heroism began its downward spiral in the trenches. I am grateful John Matthias at Notre Dame assigned the WWI soldier poets, David Jones and Wilfred Owens to one of the classes in my undergraduate course. Jones more than Owen affected me then. The war poetry of Sorley MacLean did hit me with a similar intensity. Growing up in West Virginia, in a Celtic family, veterans and their children were commonplace in our circles. I look at my Facebook friends, which mostly consist of hometown friends and acquaintances, and so many of them served in some military capacity, some with distinction. The anti-heroic narratives, tactics and strategies of the 20th and 21st centuries strike me very differently than most of my peers in the arts and humanities. The ascent of men like Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other neo-conservatives and -liberals operative in the upper regions of governments and bureaucracies, in think tanks and media, in institutions and academies, has proved disastrous for America. These chickenhawks, and their hack assets (I’m looking at you, Sean Hannity), are war criminals. They have in a few decades caused more harm to US national security than our most fervent enemies have.

"AFHGC Window Prints"
Adhesive Film, Lead-wrapped Wood
Variable Dimensions
2007
$2400

One of the final tasks we undertook at Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown during the closing process was the removal of the iconic pattern window print treatments we had installed when the project commenced. I insisted we not toss the film at the time. Now, a dozen years later, the patterns, all squished together like John Chamberlain auto metal, are presented in our Backyard Sculpture Garden in Astoria, OR.

Pulling artwork out of boxes I found some small pieces from “A Prayer for Clean Water.” The one of the adhesive prints on gold fields with an O1/Barcode flip cover depicts flag-draped caskets returning from Iraq or Afghanistan. The whole sordid affair rewrites Vietnam and its media wars, ignores the saturation of European consciousness with the stench of rotting corpses. Propaganda and marketing are too intertwined technically. Bernays saw to that. I watch the bills pile up while the push mills spew bile and spittle on the microphones of our national conversation. Perhaps Bernie will throw the engines into reverse and drag our front end out of the swamp, while our asses still occupy dry land. The alternative reality and future we verge upon are to be wrought by evil deeds and men. The path of resistance is fraught with perils of every description. One wonders if there is even a place for art in the dark and smoky whirlwind of tomorrow. When I see no point to the gift of art to my fellows, who strike me as undeserving and worse, I try to bring to mind Badiou in the kitchen at Saas-Fee at the break. I asked whether Philosophy needs art now, after stating that I believe must have Philosophy today. He passionately assured me in the positive, that now more than ever, philosophy needs art.

"Skyscraper"
Gesso on Wood Construction, Lead-wrapped Wood
30" vertical x variable dimensions
1995
$3000

"Skyscraper was assembled and sprayed at Goldleaf Framemakers of Santa Fe. The construct is fabricated from frame scraps, joined with white and wire brads.

I do not recall Badiou’s exact words. I have them written down in one of notebooks. I shall end this section with translation of Badiou (from Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil):

An immortal: this is what the worst situations that can be inflicted upon Man show him to be, in so far as he distinguishes himself within the varied and rapacious flux of life. In order to think any aspect of Man, we must begin from this principle. So if ‘rights of man’ exist, they are surely not rights of life against death, or rights of survival against misery. They are the rights of the Immortal, affirmed in their own right, or the rights of the Infinite, exercised over the contingency of suffering and death. The fact that in the end we all die, that only dust remains, in no way alters Man’s identity as immortal at the instant in which he affirms himself as someone who runs counter to the temptation of wanting-to-be-an-animal to which circumstances my expose him. And we know that every human being is capable of being this immortal - unpredictably, be it in circumstances great or small, for truths important or secondary. In each case, subjectivation is immortal, and makes Man. Beyond this there is only a biological species, a ‘biped without feathers’, whose charms are not obvious.

[END PART TWO]

AFH UPDATE [February 2019]

We live by the mouth of the Columbia River, where it empties into the Pacific Ocean. After nearly a half year in Astoria, I already notice a shift in sensibility, which seems to derive from the dynamic local environment. Saturation infuses the soul, through the near daily rains, the periodic blanketing fog banks, the often towering cloud formations, and the constant presence of water flowing past. Another wrinkle in the consciousness arises from the coming and going of commercial shipping. The big container ships, yes, but also on a different scale, the fishing and crabbing fleets operate on the awareness, calling attention to the processes of survival on the coast and by the river. Those delicious platters of fish and crustacean we devour routinely arrive through the labor of men on small craft facing tremendously dangerous conditions on the along the Oregonian shore, and the Western coastline extending south and north thousands of miles. I’ll stop here, but suffice to say the situational revelations immediately altered my aesthetics profoundly and at depth. Overall, the effects are poetic, technical, disciplinary and philosophical.

Since 2007 or -8 I have occupied storage units in the Inland Empire. I started with one to contain the important contents of Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown, my MFA thesis exhibit and solo show at Yarger|Strauss. Another unit contained mostly studio gear of every kind. Another contained mostly furniture from my student apartment and some from AFHGC. Another served as a catch-all container for all kinds of generally personal stuff, although plenty of artsy goods ended up there too. Altogether, the stash required a 26’ box truck to haul from Cali to Astoria. Over the decade+ I rented the storage units, the cost accumulated, like the dust on every exposed surface inside them: we plowed tens of thousands of dollars into them; enough to put a substantial down-payment on a home, eventually. There was also the constant badgering by the storage facility employees and management. The storage industry, I will testify, is inherently evil and cruel. In my opinion, all storage business should be either re-purposed or razed, along with the owners of said rackets. I’m looking right at you, Moishe.

This painting was first exhibited in "Tobacco Road" (ca. 1998, Nashville) and titled "Cigar Box Girl." I reworked it and re-presented it in "A Prayer for Clean Water" (ca. 2005), Austin) and re-titled it "Lust for Power."

"Lust 4 Power"
15.5" x 15"
Mixed Media on Board (Framed)
$950

There is an ongoing discourse in the globalist art world about the ethics of massive art storage complexes, like the Geneva Freeport, into which many cultural treasures disappear from public view. My narrative intersects the banal corruption of art in general by an international superclass, which is true for nearly every artist. The distortion effect imposed by the art industry’s most gluttonous players, some of whom are noxious, obsessive hoarders, is like the smoggy haze produced by a town’s dirtiest, sprawling factory. The pollution impacts everyone in the town, whether they believe, notice, comprehend why and how, or not. The primary reason I was willing to pay so much for storage for my art and our personal items, is: no one else was; and that is pretty much the bottom line. Above the bottom line, however, is a full accounting of this artist’s 4D method to insist that my aesthetic endeavors not be creatively destroyed by the horrific intellectual neglect, governance failures, commercial malpractice and social retardation afflicting this country and most others like a Biblical plague. It isn’t difficult to trace the trajectories of the world’s winners, since 2006, even if it’s hard to follow their money through all the tax havens, shell corporations, leveraged assets, currency manipulations, etc., that they employ to build enormous wealth at everyone else’s expense. It can be noted here that the Big A Art World is one prominent means by which the ludicrously rich express their power, prestige and reproductive prowess.

STORAGE #2 "Barbed Wire PJM" was first exhibited at Four Crows Gallery in Nashville in 1997. Charlotte Avant and I collaborated on the show, which was titled "COWBOYZ + COWGIRLZ." The production featured digital paintings (made in Painter and Photoshop), printed on canvas using early large format printers (Encad). Additional material was hand-painted on the printed matter. As far as I know, this was the first major artist project showcasing new digital print technology combined with traditional techniques. The 4D method is a core application, which I call "figure on abstraction." In this instance the abstract or immaterial content is all the stuff done or "created" on the computer. COWBOYZ presented layered content in themes: mythic American violence; Western heroes; the killer feminine; branding; neo-decorative elements; good versus bad guy binaries; cinematic reality versus realism; and so on. The framing and presentation was done by Ambiance in Nashville.

"Barbed Wire PJM"
[with Charlotte Avant]
Acrylic on Encad Inkjet on Canvas (Framed)
20" x 21"
1997
$1800

You know, sometimes it appears that the bad guys are winning. Appearances, so it goes, can be deceiving, and words are always fictional. The universal law, however, assures us that the good guys always win, eventually. Which probably is not a great comfort when a villain is about to blow your face off with a Colt .45. Since Y2K or so, I have operated on the notion that a quarter of my artistic efforts need be devoted to archiving my production. The impetus for that idea derives from awful, hard experience. When hard drives die, when art is damaged, destroyed or lost, when you lose track of a collector, the void in the catalog can cause an psychic ache that may or may not be ameliorated by a meditation session, massage, affirmation, etc. The subtext of all Western art is waste, which is the Civilization’s Ur product. Waste is the relentless undercurrent of cultural production and artist mythology. Getting wasted is the non-artistic expression of creative (self-)destruction. That the two forces (art and getting wasted) combine in the romantic, imaginary artist mythos should hardly be surprising to anyone. The awful consequence of the valorization of gross waste in art life is played out generation after generation. The massive current crop of ODs and suicides in significant portions of the population ought to make the gods of the beauteous, artsy West blissful. It also is worth noting that the demographics of early demise suggest an intentional undermining of resistance against the wholesale co-optation of society by the Superclasses.

"Army Joe"
70"h x variable dimensions
Life-sized Figurine
$1200

"Army Joe" initially appeared in my CGU installation "7 Episodes" and later in an AFH Gallery Chinatown (ersatz or untitled) exhibit during the opening weekend of the Murikami show at MoCA. I bought him at an Inland Empire army surplus store. As far as I can tell, this figure is no longer in production. He is made I think using a foam injection mold, is not too heavy and will spook you if you forgot he was hanging out in the corner there.

My career plans have in large measure been hampered by 20 years of America at war, the Crash of 2007, the lack of justice for the bastards behind both disasters, and the ongoing political, economic, military and social cataclysm that is more or less a status quo now. Nonetheless, I have done whatever I can do to keep the faith. I realize that planetary events are nothing to take personally. For crying out loud, at least my species is not extinct! Yet! I could frame this segment differently, through a lens of personal responsibility, which is where the logic becomes complex. A contemporary artist, according to the Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, will need to fund her labor in one of these ways: sales; family support; public support; a day job. Over a lifetime, many artists will rely on any and/or all of those types of art funding, often combining them. If I attack the private patronage art industry for its over-reliance on the wealthiest patrons, obviously I will have damaged my attractiveness as a collectible artist. If I attack the public art system for its poor management and corrupt policies, that will not endear me to the agents in that network. If I alienate my family, how could I rationally expect them to desire my art for their homes? If I am true artist, I am likely unemployable in a great proportion of commercial concerns, whose practical ethics contradict my democratic aesthetics of freedom, of liberty. I’m looking at you, Bill Gates/Microsoft.

"American Artist"
48" x 36"
Mixed media on canvas
1985-6 (Text added 2005)
$4400

I originally exhibited "American Artist" in my undergrad pop-up Isis Gallery senior show at Notre Dame in 1986. The last time I showed it (with added text) was in "A Prayer for Clean Water" in Austin, Texas at St. Edward's University.

During the past eight years of doctoral production, but especially between 2015 and the present, post-Occupy, post-Bernie, post-Standing Rock, in the middle of the Yellow Vest uprising, I have engaged art on a basis that diverges from the arc of the half century or so prior. Sorting through the contents of those four storage units, I can reacquaint myself with the conflicts of my life. The thousands of items in these boxes, tubes, bins and blankets possess meaning, for me if no one else. The struggles of art life are here, but so are the moments of celebration. Anonymity and celebrity present a binary form. Memory is the medium within which all the ideas and experiences circulate, as one gazes from this moment into moments past. It is the challenge of integration to uncover the continuum existing in the objects. An exhibition can serve the community or collective memory by linking the objective to continuity in the instance of sharing. When things are remitted to a hiding place, a kind of cage, a quarantine, whatever the justification, the natural order is disturbed. This is why prisons-for-profit are a heinous, hellish phenomenon. People are not things to be dropped down a hole and sealed off from us, and certainly ought never be commodified in and through imprisonment. The repercussions on society are incalculable and severe.

"Love's Gotta Gun"
Mixed Media (Painted Frame with Silver Tape and Adhesive Prints)
15.5" x 11.5"
1997-2006
$950

One of the original COWBOYZ + COWGIRLZ "Love's Gotta Gun" series first exhibited at Four Crows Gallery, later at Dreamworks SKG (Nashville). Additional layers and materials added for "A Prayer for Clean Water" cycle of exhibits in Austin. This piece was installed at Pump Project for "Overflow Show."

No one likes to lose all the time. It should not happen in fair game play. Why not blow the whistle on cheaters? Why not call out the ones who are sucking the fun out of the contest? A citizen can risk everything in the current scheme, by contradicting a pundit like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, or taking a position against the surveillance state, or pointing out the very real harm caused by unaccountable entities like the Federal Reserve, the Council on Foreign Relations, the World Economic Forum. When the monopoly media push fiction at the masses, a mass response is logical. The problem with that logic is simplicity. Causation in a 4D reality does not conform to 3D or 2D logic. There is no point there. The finality of punishment is subverted by the complexity of integrated virtual and actual platforms. The materializing reaction will not meet the immaterial cause. There will be no satisfaction of the desire for restoration of harmony. We must recognize that those who are winning currently are effectively adapting to 4D circumstances and suppressing the capacity of others to do likewise. It is rocket science.

"DEATH [Fragment]"
Charcoal, Quin. Red/Gold, Stencil on Redwood Block
13.5" x 10.5" x 2"
2004
$1400

Created during Morris Graves Studio Residency and exhibited in "Bar Codes + Rituals + Subliminal Tapes. Ballerina figure (Molly) was drawn from photo data session hosted by Beckley Dance Theatre School (2003).

The metaphysical nature of perception does not prevent mortality. A concept is not a workaround for the end of awareness, as a function of embodiment. Art is a festival for the body. To sustain the child’s pose into an adult state permits expressive humanity in a context of holistic responsibility. The heft of our inter-generational commitment is mighty, but art releases our collective and one’s individual spirit to the task of sustaining vision over time. As an American citizen, I wish to participate in the programmatic orientation to a national vision for the future, one that fosters harmonious relationships among our internal and external kinfolk. President Trump won the 2016 election by falsely promising to undertake that enterprise. President Obama twice betrayed that cause, in actions and failures to act great and small. The course of this nation, in our emergent 4D universe, is being erased as the planet spins in space and time. Everything matters, and I, for One, refused to allow my creative life to be auctioned away for pennies on the Dollar, or tossed into a landfill. My world is not garbage.

"Glow-in-the-Dark 01 Monitor"
Vinyl Sticker, Acrylic, Apple Monitor, Lead-wrapped Wood Base
12" x 15" x 14"
2000
$2100

Originally exhibited in "Heartless01" exhibit cycle in Nashville at J&J's Market & Cafe, an alternative art space at that time.

Can vision be toxic or radioactive? Attaching these terms to interpersonal relations is a tactic that must be critiqued. Vision assists our social sensation, as it assists our physical senses. The world you see is mediated by the body first. Now we must contend with an external media that would usurp our trust in what optics assure us is factual. The media runs scripts that are highly processed, like Cheese Whiz, that produce channel-clogging gunk for the mind and spirit, as Hegel conceived them. The stupidity we encounter is a product of intent, as bad design. Malfunction is a utility whose output is waste. Obsolescence is the poetic misconception of the professional wastrel. No sound and sane human arrives at the new day with the dream of wasting time, creating wasteful things, laboring in the service of waste. Nor does the sound and sane human arrive at the new day with dream of excess everything or anything. Sane and sound people desire enough, that is all. Toxicity and radioactivity exist in dimensions of human awareness that long ago forgot the meaning of enough.

"Vision Channel Device 1 + 2"
Vinyl on Pigmented Acrylic
Lead-wrapped Wood Base
48" x 48" x2 (Adjustable Angle)
2000
$4000

These panels were originally exhibited in the DddD Collective exhibition "Inside><Outside" at the Parthenon in Nashville. They have been re-applied in AFH scenarios, projects and expos ever since. Most recently the red VCD was installed at AFH Gallery Chinatown as a kind of signage.

[View 1]

No contraption, no widget will be adequate to encourage a person to reformat the drive upon which her existence is rigged. It is not a proposition for machinery. No great cure, no wonder pill will fulfill the human prospect of freedom. Looking at you, Sacklers! Art is an agent for radical transformation, but its potential is rarely met. The miraculous is a media target. The intellectual bias and prejudice against the manifestation of vision is a known quantity. Yet the rebellion against such blatant disregard for normal humanity fails. Why? Because the mass production of ignorance and poor perception is patently successful. Because the winners will stop at nothing to win. Because whatever enemy they perceive, they will cruelly assault, and they are elite in the art of unspeakable behavior. They are fantastic at mediocrity. They are amazingly proficient at banality. The excel at anarchy, when democracy threatens their power, money or sexual gratification. No crime is beyond them. The mock the Apocalypse, in the interest of their own advantage.

[View 2]

Not long ago, they conducted their affairs in secret chambers, with strange rituals and enforced codes of conduct. Now, the Other is a boilerplate, and the world’s most powerful and richest people seem to have lost their tremors at the mob. The status quo will not last. Appetites for conquest, demands for conversion and obeisance will continue to swell among the global oligarchy. Art will reflect this development. The patterns of the image will achieve congruence with the time, and space will mold itself to that form. Personhood will be visible as an impression of the urgency of irrepressible excess. No patina will be too lavish. No expenditure will be enough. No art will restrict the necessity of domination. No territory will be immune to the demand for supply. The market must abound. The return on investment must grow. The accounts must burgeon. The collection must expand. The security must be impeccable. The style will underwrite the establishment of order. No deviation will be permitted. No dissent will be tolerated.

"John K's Buckets & Mop"
Tar, Buckets, Mop, Lead-wrapped Wood Base
75" x 15" x 30"
2006
$2500

First deployed in Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown experimental 4D installation series that included "MFA Project (Installation Array 1)," "Super Lucky Masters of War," "You Can't Buy Any of This," "You Just Gotta Believe!!!" "Everyone Is Not an Artist," "Ideas Aren't Art," "LULA #2: Super Lucky Moons," "RE-FUSED" and more.

In the extremity of polarization, the hunger for a measure of humility will abide among the poor. The mode of healing for the grossly intolerant super-wealthy and -powerful will prove ostentatious but empty. Little care will be taken to ensure the safety of the young and old, unless the factory construct adheres. This is the neo-Darwinian dystopia of the unresolved future. The predictions of violent upheaval and menace by doom will fade into the burdens of mundane chores. Every step will become heavier than the last one. Each breath fainter than the previous one. Hands will reach for comfort and receive addiction. Buttery lust will be drained of potency, until all that remains of seduction is its tension. The repulsive will advance from there. We can already see the notations. Being famous is no longer a temporary fix. Fame is the mirage we all thought it would be, when our friends began to drown in it. The oasis hid a graveyard of needy youth, disguised as businessmen in suits. Only the sludge in the pits of their infinite despair drew the fat vultures’ attention.

"REFUGEE"
Charcoal, Acrylic (Quin. Red/Gold) on Board
17" x 13.5"
2002
$1200

One of the "Century of War" paintings, only exhibited at Elena Graves' Brentwood Manse in a private home show in (I think) 2002.

As my Tarahumara friend Rudy, the White Buffalo, used to say, “We’re all refugees, now.” The storage industrial complex is a sign of the times. Media like Storage Wars glamorize the predatory and consumptive in our society. Abandonment is a facet of the schism of property and place for the uprooted. The pretense that looting is a worthy vocation or fun and rewarding hobby is horrid. The debasement of the social contract is almost total. After all, once torture and assassination are acceptable, what is unacceptable? The bond between a person and her worldly goods is shadowy at best, because no respect is reserved for the synthesis of things and people. The cyborg is the cliche, the superhero is the icon and the fellow in front of you at the grocery store is less real than the date you’re trying to make in Tinder on your mobile device. Sex robots are evidently here to stay, for those who can afford them. Meanwhile, the extension of the virtual has unfettered HOME from its own causation. The domestic is a casualty of endless war and growth.

"New X Pattern 1 (Vertical)"
Acrylic on Wood
86" x 2"
1995
$1250

My original concept for these had to do with dissolving the hard 90 degree corners in white cube rooms. Also the color sequences inferred combinations with other interior art and design elements. I built these and the others of the series from scraps of framing materials at Goldleaf Framemakers of Santa Fe, where I worked at the time.

We must reconsider the idea of the infinite vertical. The fantasy of unlimited growth is as stricken as the fantasy that government, art, romance or anything worthwhile should run more like business. POTUS Trump ought to by example have abolished the fakery of almighty markets once and for all. We can see that our basic network of systems is rigged against anyone who is not outlandishly wealthy, connected and powerful. Reproduction is connectivity power. The human/technological mesh of layered communications means that total democracy is possible. That five monopoly corporations dominate web traffic, is an intolerable affront to free society. Technological reproduction is as much a human right as sexual reproduction. Free reproduction is equal in value to free speech and a free press to liberated society. Assigning governance roles via policy (see FCC, net neutrality) assures the immolation of democratic concourse. The world is not only vertical. It is, as we have known for hundreds of years at least, spherical, and therefore fundamentally all-directional, and infinite by measure. Business never made this world or our life in it. Business is another word for leech.

"Red 01 Bar Code"
Die Cut Foil Print on Metallum
20" x 20" (Framed)
2004
$2400

Originally exhibited in "Bar Codes + Rituals + Subliminal Tapes" in Eureka, CA. The Metallum substrate was made available to me by its manufacturer, Riverwind, LLC, where I did an artist residency and tested the unique pressed-metal paper-like material for artist applications. Times printing, owned by the Strope family for four generations and serving the Humboldt community since 1854, produced the die cut foil print and affixed it to the Metallum. "Red 01 Bar Code" is an artist proof.

In Elephant Man, the Joseph Merrick character played by John Hurt poignantly says, “I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!” The crux of the human condition now is the presumption of inhumanity. Business insists man is a commodity, an extension of the slave-based model of colonial society. I can shout “I am not a bar code,” but the cashier will understand the resonance of this manifesto statement as much as she would understand if I shouted, “I am not an elephant.” Because the business depends upon my conformity to its complex, ubiquitous, pervasive system, networks of systems and syndicates. I must be compelled to synthesize with the worknet, or… the glitch could cause a system crash. At least that is the anxiety resistance produces in those for whom co-optation is the daily rigor. To observe a fully integrated system operative glitch in the face of confrontation, conflict or rebellion is to begin to assess the damage from hive mind on a normal person. The tragedy of the age is the extent to which people have been converted to mechanisms for their own dehumanization, a process rooted in compliance protocols.

"Desert Waterfall"
Frame Fragments, Sand, Column Base, Lead-wrapped Wood
24" x 24" x 16"
1995
$2650

This construction is composed of elements that come from several phases. The acrylic-painted wood "waterfall" is created from goldleaf art framer scraps, assembled with white glue and nail gun. I can't recall where I found the column base, but I've been using it in studio practice and installations since at least the late '90s. I scored the lead-wrapped wood platforms in Austin in 2005. They had been used for industrial glass and ceramic production. The sand we gathered in Cannon Beach today.

The sensation of falling down is medicine for the lie of the endless vertical. The non-scientific idea of gravity, conjoined with the scientific definition, synthesize to humble form in practice. The convolution of natural material elements with our most humble perceptions (e.g., of light and shadow) produce without obvious effort substantial innovation. The fear of falling is valuable to the sentient locomotive, because it heightens consciousness of curved paths. One of my favorite highway sign graphics is the truck tipping over. The implication is the driver enters the curve too fast and the truck rolls. Planting a structure in the earth is facilitated by the engineer. I once knew a man who repaired radio towers, sometimes on the top of skyscrapers. He had nightmares that he would drop a wrench, which by the time it reached the ground, might as well have been a missile shot from a cannon.

"01 Monitor (NASA)"
Monitor, Adhesive Vinyl, Lead-wrapped Wood
30" x 18" x 19"
2000
$2100

The NASA monitor was a gift from my friend and original DddD collective artist and scientist Chip Cox. For the "Heartless01" sequence of exhibits and projects, I added the 01 sticker. I've always loved how that black 01 works on the green-gray screen of that monitor.

On the drive north through the I-5 corridor of California and Oregon, I witnessed a ghastly tragedy. One of the most fertile landscapes on the planet has gone fallow. A reader interested in the history of the region, specifically the chronicling of water rights battles, might start with a book like Cadillac Desert, by Mark Reisner. My emotions at the scale of the debacle ranged from fury to stupefaction. Whether one knows about the situation, or the unfolding revolution in France, or the LIBOR scandal, or the Panama Papers, or…is a function of media working for the sustainably reproductive rich and powerful as it was designed to do, and failing everyone else. Or rather…is a function of media converting mass populations into resources for extraction and exploitation schemes to serve the wealthiest individuals and families in the world. The immaterial industry correlates to the material industry dimensionally. The war between Amazon and Wal*Mart is a key point of convergence or intersection in the duel. The analog of brick and mortar-based production, including manufacture and delivery networks, corresponds, is a flip side to the new media topology for data, an immaterial goldmine for a host of extractors and exploiters, in the private, government and military sectors. While new Dust Bowls evolve, the forever “New” Economy emerges, continuously.

"MacLean Warrior"
Acrylic on Wood
24" x 7"
1995
$850

One of the Headstone Series, inspired by the carved capstones of clan burial sites in Scotland on Iona and elsewhere in the Highlands and Islands. This piece initially was exhibited in "Where My Feet Stick to the Ground" in Nashville at the Peanut Gallery.

I am not a meteorologist, but that doesn’t prevent me from entertaining crackpot conceptions about the climate. I am not unequipped to analyze chaotic phenomena in large and small systems. I am accomplished at spotting the source of turmoil in a complex organization for production. If the dysfunction is intentional, then the agent of dysfunction will often camouflage their contribution to the disruption, for myriad purposes, one of the primary ones being accountability avoidance. When one drives 19 hours in any direction on American Highways, one is presented a window into the state of the Union, which is regional. America is a 50-state republic, divided further into smaller territories, in order to enable bottom-to-top democracy, local to federal. The current global climate narrative displaces a national discourse needed immediately on the viability of our form of government. We must ask ourselves whether our country is still a functional free federation of states and smaller provisional governments, reducing to the size of dispersed villages. After the 2016 election, and the role of the Democratic Party in rigging the primaries, the question is no longer moot. Bernie just announced he will run again, presumably as a Democrat. Speaking for myself, after the truth of 2016 came out, I concluded I can never in good conscience as a free man vote Democrat again, unless the party makes amends and fixes its fixes.

"Half-moon Form Pile"
Ink on Museum Board
40" x 30"
2006
$1200

This ink painting was created with digital animation in mind. The form is inspired by Joshua Tree "rock piles." The half-moon shape is applied in the spirit of Ab-Ex, but subverts that reference as a paint-pattern. The museum board was a gift of the Sam Francis Estate.

In a 4D system, the composition armature can be constructed utilizing a single form. The pattern is not defined by identical attributes. It is described by modification of the impression, and achieved through spatial displacement. The inspiration for the practice is time itself. A single, consistent entity can be many things within the context of duration. The meaning of this statement derives from an openness to the artifacts of existence, which include trails, scratches, indentations, weathering, blur, scuffs, and a host of interesting accidents. Variation is the signature of the hand-made shape. The ineptly titled Artificial Intelligence imaginary can only simulate the truth of real making. It is the Achilles Heel of AI, that machine intelligence is still coupled to mathematical perfection, to the balanced equation, to harmonized final outcomes. The recent seriously ugly AI art is a testimony to the mismatch of expectations written into the code of virtual humanity. If the reader is motivated to study computer-enabled art practice, peek at the projects of Joseph Nechvatal. If I have an issue with the language of my friend Joseph’s virtuosity, it is in his own reassignment of analog terminology to paint a portrait of his (Nechvatal’s) creation. It is to my mind an unnecessary move. Joseph’s work stands on its singular merits, and the progressive accomplishment throughout is remarkable in its own terms.

"Pixel Painting"
Acrylic on Cut Canvas
10" x 8"
2007
$950

The Pixel Painting series is my answer to the technical question the so-called Minimal artists proposed regarding an interstices between 2D and 3D artist practice, and object specificity. I worked on the Pixel Paintings during my MFA program at CGU, but the real solution for the proposition above I found in the Topos series of 4D VyNIL. The Pixel Paintings are the substrates for the Topos Paintings. The raised paint effect is created using heavy body Golden acrylics, pressed between similar surfaces, then carefully separated. My CGU MFA peer Quinton Bemiller has done a lot with this technique.

The 4D artist, at least for now, must manage the archive of her own production. The archival project is an intervention, a preventative technique that subverts the command and control mechanisms that undermine artistic freedom. The code, narrative or language of definition is the means by which the artist is enslaved. The numerical for valuation is the means by which the art is relegated to the overarching property regime. The cost-benefit analysis is the nemesis of aesthetics. A 4D archive for art begins with the inventory of objects and continues infinitely with the immaterial content and context those archived objects generate. The educational prospectus for each 4D artist archive coincides simultaneously with all others. The conceptual image of the program for a 4D catalog of created things necessitates the reconsidering of scarcity as the baseline model for art. Art no longer is limited by the perception of physicality attaching to property. Neither is art merely idea, or reducible to code.

"Regional Standard Arts Project (RSAP) Door Sign"
Acrylic, Ink, Rub-on Text on Board
19" x 17"
1993
$1800

When I founded RSAP, it was the only artist cooperative gallery in Santa Fe, in a field of over 200 retail art spaces. The door sign was (obviously) handmade, and not crafty, really. The high professional standards of the Santa Fe art market were a foil for our project. The artists named on the sign were the finalists, after 18 months of refining our mission and vision. RSAP was located in the beautiful Pueblo Deco depot in the Santa Fe Railyard. Some of these artists, like Robert Ash and Melinda Morrison, had their pro experiences showing at RSAP. It was a remarkable undertaking.

The self-evident aspect in art is fiction. To empty art-filled storage units into a truck and haul the load cross-country and unload it into a home is to confront the volumetric quality of art, in the class Things. The 1%er artist today hires a factory to enlist production crews to manifest concept-to-object, Hegelian art. The Everyone-Is-an-Artist fiction has become a business model for talentless, craftless, clever con artists. The philosophy of objectivity justifies the excesses of Hirst, Koons, Ai Wei Wei, Koons and the rest of the roster of A-List art pros. The art fairs obliterate the model of artistic self-sufficiency that is half of the core of American democracy. The other half is the capacity for vertical integration of the collective, and the process by which self and collective are harmonized in the medium of balanced interest. The success of the American model can be compared to a major league batting average in baseball, right? For those who get the reference, our assessments jigger on the fly a relative, metaphorical approximation of success as ratio to failure in the shadow system of history: to wit, America’s founder aspirations; and our contemporary ones. The idiotic “more like a business” doctrine must be replaced by “more like a baseball game.” See Bull Durham or even Slap Shot, by God, for amplification.

"Leslie"
Ink, Acrylic on Paper
48" x 24"
2004
$2800 "Leslie" was created during my Morris Graves studio residency (Loleta, CA). The image was derived from a photo of the model by Trey Mitchell, during the pre-production phase of "INSIDE><OUTSIDE" in Nashville. Leslie was pregnant at the time of the shoot. The painting is composed on paper provide from Graves' own stash, and the colorful Dr. Ph. Martin inks I used were also Graves'. "Leslie" was first exhibited in "Barcodes + Rituals + Subliminal Tapes," and later in "Overflow Show" at Pump Project in Austin.

The malaise short-term ROI-influenced ideation crushes the alignment of production and value over time. Both production and value are time-based (4D). Art is too. These three elements (production, value, art) combine to establish what we loosely call contemporary art. The schism for art promoted in this flawed, insufficient configuration appears when the product and its evaluation conflated with art, in the medium of the fungible. Money is imagined to be fungible. Art is not money (looking at you, dead Andy Warhol). If fungibility links to the deadline and the third dynamic in the triangulation is coercion, for the objective (art included), then you have a thoroughly unethical economics of artificially induced desperation. The storage industry operates on this basis, as does the US Government over the past decade and under the current administration. The human coast of this anti-democratic method of governance is practically immeasurable. It is the recipe for addiction, particularly when set in an environment of ludicrous waste and excess for the “winners” or “owners.” The despicable use of language by the super-rich and their minions to devalue the demos (“takers,” “deplorables,” “have-nots,” etc.) is evokes the exclamations of tyrants throughout human history.

"Barcode 01 Funkshunart T"
Silkscreen on Hanes 2XL White Tee Shirt
Variable Dimensions
2004
$240

During the "Eureka!" Ink People Center for the Arts-hosted residency, Shane Kennedy and I undertook a number of small or single-run art multiple projects. One of those yielded a set of Funkshunart (wearable art) tee shirts. I don't recall who our printer collaborators were on this. The finished clothing was included in the exhibit "Bar Codes + Rituals + Subliminal Tapes." NOTE: The shirt will be dry cleaned and pressed before it is shipped to a purchaser.

Upon review, my art since the 1980s is uncompromising in the things that matter to me most. I am confident that it can “hold its ground” with any artist’s production over the same timeline. The body of work is technically diverse, embodies a breadth of aesthetic prospects, aptly embodies the dynamism of the age (analog + virtual), progresses logically, and more. I am proud of my art. An artist who is critic of his own material may or may not be like the lawyer representing himself. The feeling to which I refer has nothing to do with representation in a court of law. The pride I feel is a survivalist pride, which is predictably bittersweet. Surviving as an artist frequently has nothing at all to do with the art itself. The conflation of artistry and art as a profession is fictional. Art makes love and business fucks for money. It’s as simple and dumb as that. When economy catapults into a 4th dimension for art then we will learn what is possible for art (and humanity) over the next millennia. Keeping in mind that mankind has some key problems to resolve within the same bundle.

"...Custody Evaluation"
Acrylic and Ink on Masonite
18" x 24"
1995

$2700 "...Custody Evaluation" was originally exhibited in Eidolon Gallery in Santa Fe in a show titled "The Divorce Industry." Every time I see the few remaining pieces of the series is like peeling a scab, re-opening a wound. "Divorce Industry" was my first professional solo exhibit in a retail gallery.

The fracture of the universe into building blocks for human knowledge is an obsolete, less than 4D precept. That concept of accumulation is suffocated by the virtual. The Fordist economy is on the verge of extinction, as Elon Musk is discovering. One-size (dimension) will not fit all. No amount of smashing the square peg makes it round, which is the lesson of Afghanistan. The manufacture of failure is the secret to diet industry success. It is the secret of modern Capitalism, when the ledger balances in favor of the tiny fraction of those who win and against those losing majorities. Capitalism is not an ideology, or a science, or an art. It is a design fiction, a misrepresentation sustained as a project with a specific goal. No amount of philanthropy restores the good in Capitalism, which is amoral or evil in itself. I’m looking at you, Eli and Edythe Broad! A new art world is possible, to paraphrase the Illuminator, and it must be devoid of Broad and his ilk. The marriage of art and science in 4D cannot succeed without the bringing to heel of the financial sector. Technology is ultimately worthless, if its primary function is to make Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Schmidt and the rest of the geek-i-garchs unimaginably rich and powerful.

[END PART ONE]

AFH UPDATE [January 2019]

Over the weekend while I was working on various Matterhorn Project items, I saw a notification that informed me that Flickr was uploading photos from my iPhone. The mobile was not plugged in to the iMac, which is connected to the web. Flickr windows were opened. WTF. I don’t like being hacked. It turned out that the culprit was the Flickr Uploadr app I’d downloaded in a half-assed way a couple of weekends ago. I thought it hadn’t worked for some reason, and used the old tool to add some photos to the AFH Flickr portal. Anyway, it’s 2019 and the web is automated in ways that were inconceivable in, say, 1995. I’ve decided for the moment to take a laid back approach to the situation, partly because the images that Flickr made an album with (all by its automated “self”) are ones that I want to reconsider. Let’s call it a happy accident. I thought I was finished reviewing my time in NYC (and Oxford, etc.), but the catalog the Uploadr threw back in my face & forefronted the past several years (1/2016-19) in my mind, whether I wanted it to or not. Emotionally, my response is a mixed bag, containing low lows and good times, and a bunch of life moments that hardly feel real anymore.

“Empty Pocket Cyclops Cowhand,” Bushwick Open Studios group show (2014)

You know, dear reader, that AFH Flickr archive has had over 660,000 views, since we went live in 2006. Those numbers are nuts! Some social media/consumer portable culture icons get those numbers for a single post nowadays, I know. But in the mid-Oughts that sort of massive interactivity with images put the world on notice that an individual, any individual, could effectively compete with media giants for the eyes and attention of users the world over. We designed an AFH platform that had multiple access points and lots of connectivity. The array featured a nice balance of original content, project documentation, theory, critical discourse, cultural/political/economic analysis and more. We reached a lot of folks, proved the 4D model (analog>virtual<>analog>virtual) and, best of all, a lot of the time it was fun as hell. We worked with a lot of very cool people. A bunch of them are doing great work right this minute. I’ll turn 55 next month, and am discovering that Rudy White Buffalo was steering me straight. “You spend the first 50 years experimenting and the second 50 assimilating,” he said, with a big grin. “After that first 100, if you get that far, you’ll be a real human being.” Those Tarahumaras used to lived hundreds of years, Rudy claimed.

Fletcher Liegerot performing in "Artist Zoo" > Arts in Bushwick/Bushwick Open Studios (2014) in AFHstudioBK

Shane lent me The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker to read. I like it. I trained with poets at the University of Notre Dame, including John Matthias and Goran Printz-Pahlson. I’ve been to quite a few readings over the years, and done a few myself. Poetry seems an odd activity to revisit in these hard times. The same can be said of any artistic enterprise. Of course the opposite is true: poetry, dance, art, music, theater and so on - the humanities, the juicy creative stuff - these are best things to do, when it appears we all are on the verge of war, or awawr. The US government is shut down over a wall proposed for the Mexican border. The economy is teetering at the edge of recession. China and America are maneuvering through the first salvos of a trade war, which hotheads suggest could shift into the real kind. The “wars/rumors of war” churn is in ON mode. Russia, Iran, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Taiwan. A little spark is all that is needed to start a YUGE conflagration. Cross fingers. The weather is mystifying and terrifying, with glaciers melting, forests blazing, droughts, etc. Meanwhile, the SuperRich gather at Davos to fret about Inequality, as they did last year, but if you crunch the numbers the message does not conform to the massage. The Yellow Vests are taking it to the next level. The lies are losing their luster.

"IN GOD WE TRUST" (Bushwick - Livin' the Dream!) ~ October, 2014

An artist in the USA is a citizen, first. Whatever one’s occupation or non-occupation, in a democracy, this is the case. The subterfuge of democracy is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, programmatically applied over time to some degree, but also arising from a myriad of conditions, forces, dynamics and circumstance. More than ever before, humanity is equipped to address anti-democracy at most any level. So then, why is no adequate defense of representative, republican government visible? Which is not to question the consistent appearance of resistance ~ it is ever present, and a menace, a source of trepidation to those who demand the co-optation, or even extinction of free society. The ghost of rebellion haunts these individuals, their concourse, their decadence, their syndicates. It is the horrible logic driving their hiring of private armies, their expressions of dismay, public and private, their accidental slippages in which they demonstrate disdain, hatred and loathing for those they worry threaten or despise them and their false status and pride. These parasites and predators, these sociopaths, know deeply their existence itself is an abomination. I will not accept their patronage. This position has cost me tremendously over the decades. I refuse that form of slavery, because it extends directly to their ideas about "collecting.” To these oligarchs and their minions, the art object is an object of consumption, a wily theft from the public domain, a slave bought and sold at auction, something that - like everything - has a price, the means by which they dictate value, a court joke, a key to separating culture from the commonwealth, a sign of power, wealth and reproduction. Like them, their affliction unto art is an abomination. They would we be doomed, as they are, bereft of Spirit, shadow creatures with numbers and names attaching. Their days are numbered and their names will be forgotten, and thereby erased for all time.

Signs of Movement, NYC (2014)

The templates for community action are only inert, in themselves. Only when people apply them, utilize them, is their value realized. Time-based performance is a means by which such models become catalysts for collective behavior and organization. The presence of noise (music), food (sustenance), touch (dance) and so on, in formal context with overlays of both power and control plus release and freedom ~ the recipe for fiestas pretty much seems hard-wired into the human experience. The phenomenon of the block party for instance is practice for mobilization (for emergency, for war), as much as it is an outpouring of shared culture or belief or sensation. Decoupling the praxis from its awful iterations (e.g., lynching) and reassigning it to free, democratic purposes (secular, not to honor kings either), that is a task for the 4D generation.

Giglio in the Morning, Williamsburg, BK (2014)

One binary that necessarily must be disposed of promptly is “living within one’s means” versus “meaning in one’s life.” This superimposed pragmatism is a moralism inflicted by the rich on the poor. Now that being unimaginably wealthy is a joy a few people know, and impoverishment is the mundane reality of billions of people, the austerity for the serf class program deserves a toss in the rubbish bin, along with those monsters who peer down from their rooks at the masses and launch pithy missiles at the homeless hordes. Which these neo-robber barons committed to the wastelands, through the management and enforcement armies serving the whims of said robber barons, more or less operating at their beck, call and disposal. On the one side of the binary are for-profit prisons, the surveillance state, the destruction of public education, health care and welfare, for the young and elderly. On the other is the $300,000,000 yacht with an IMAX theater onboard. Such disparities cry out for redress. A Tomahawk will do, in a Tea Party scenario. Yes, a revolution is in order, and it is in the works, putting itself together, a phenomenon that can be understood as the real, speculative but non-objective version of a weak conceptual pipe dream AI.

Little House, Brooklyn (2015)

I watched most of the trending documentaries and movies focusing on the art world, films like The Price of Everything. I was not impressed. All this is reminiscent of the media spillage that preceded the Great Recession, the spew that washed out of the artsy sewer trenches behind gates, on private jets and whore islands, in which the dumbluxe .00001% orgies happen. Artnet posted a 7 Best compendium for the Holiday, which I used for a short list. Of course the ubiquitous Jerry Saltz was front and center, and the usual suspects. Saltz is the equivalent of Tokyo Rose, urging artists to not be envious, and shit. The farce is strong in that one. His filthy Pulitzer, which he should timeshare with that wily punkass Walter Robinson, ought to be a poly-clay prop zombie figurine. These atrocious cunts deserve any sucker punch they get. The entire rotty lot of ‘em. If you happen to watch all the pictures artnet recommends, and you happen to be an artsy revo-lad or -lass, make another list, with the name of everyone who appears in this slipshod propaganda. Then create your masterpiece, which, if done properly, should also appear streaming on one of the services, and/or an elite cable channel. Aren’t these fancy tech terms becoming quainter by the nanosecond? & Remember: Nothing that J. Saltz writes, says or does is non-fictional.

"Zombie Formalism... Is Totally Bullshit ~ '& so are J Saltz + W Robinson" (Bushwick, 2014)

The drain is making funny noises. Must be partially clogged. The infusion of creative class projects blurring the lines between actual art and design, or commercial art, is a function of basic exchange value. As one’s identity converts into profiling, and the enormity of the transaction and redistribution of all wealth/information is achieved, and your genetic code is projected through the next few generations, whose fate is thereby determined, and the management of outcomes and incomes is stripped of any risk to the most powerful and well-vested in our human fellowship, THEN an art will appear to pay homage to the winners. Once again, art will be properly sorted. Techne will no longer be distinguishable from episteme, and the border between one and zero will be extinguished, again. Made and unmade will occur at the whim of the non-king/king. The Court Artist will be the only kind who gets paid.

"Where the Wall Stops, the Image Begins" (Williamsburg, BK 2014)

QuicktimeVR and some of the other early software tools for representing 360 degree spatial perspective in the ethereal virtual medium propose a really new optics. Hardly anyone I know of seems to have been interested in the strange artifacts generated by these programs. Like gamer glitches that happened in world-building for 1st person shooters Marathon and Doom. You could still find these bizarre schismatic features in later games like Duke Nukem, Call of Duty and Max Payne, but programmers and codes got better and worlds inside the box stabilized. Spinning around and looking up and down in virtuality is generally tedious and funky. I haven’t yet played with true next gen VR, or even the crap low-end gear and wares. At some point, while I was writing Matterhorn Project, post-Occupy, the thrill was gone. NY, and more specifically, Brooklyn, crushed VR for me - even though I was in proximity of many heavies in the field routinely.

As a result of intently studying economics, politics and management, over the past decade and a half I am skeptical of abstraction in analysis. When I hear an expert discuss “the Economy” as if that economy were a type of natural phenomenon, like weather used to be, I tend to discredit the projected narrative to follow. The academic relation to economy is fraught with conflict, and this is true of politics, management, and also society or culture, broadly speaking, the humanities. Art is located in all these sectors, and provides a neutral lens for rendering them outside the bracketing narrative. So far, the borders of art have not been determined with certainty. The definition of fine art is obviously a work of fiction in a continuum. However, the craft of art is specialized enough over centuries to require disruption on a massive scale to dislocate it (artist craft). No matter what happens, it appears, people will paint and sculpt. As long as the sun rises and sets and there are people.

…And your friends and family will want some, right artists? This is art outside economy. The price of everything artistic is not measurable in the same vernacular as Bitcoin. Which is true of almost everything, really. Only the endlessly unsatisfied hunger of the modern financial sector is averse to that reality. The Fin_Sec consciousness is a concentrated AI whose organism is Civilization itself, empire, the command and control complex, the extraction exploitation scheme. The 1 % art world as such is an extension of that program. Simply put, a rationalization and justification utility designed to uphold the principles of certainty that suspend accountability for Civilization’s current winners. One’s alignment, for or against (as W put it), will to a great degree determine one’s trajectory in relation to Civilization, if one has agency at all. Musicians really get this one, because the dynamic resembles rhythm.

Art is like the lid on the garbage can of Civilization. America is the moment when we can turn the can over and dump all that junk into the yard of the asshole who made it. We don’t have to walk past the dumpster, and sniff the putrid decay. We don’t have to drive behind the garbage truck for blocks and sink into the seat while garbage men dump oozing, fetid piles of heinous stuff into the back of the vehicle, and squash it with the machine, then cart it off to some facility or landfill to be made temporarily invisible and neutral, the worst kind of anti-truth. Meaning waste. Art despises waste. Art supposes everything and everyone is precious to begin with, because the artist wants to see everything, and see it for what it is. Life is so short. Wasting any of it is wrong.

The shadow of a thing is inseparable from that thing, except in bad dreams. Waste is imagining the shadow and thing separable, then forcing that nightmare into the visible spectrum, assigning abstract value to the process and outcome, so as to create profit and loss. A few winners get the goods. Everyone else gets the pollution and the bill. Waste is a close relative of the conception of the non-utile. It is also related to the dispensation of non-personhood, out of which arises the conception of the slave, which is useful, until such time as it (the slave) is determined to be waste. The linking of meaning to the process of creating wasteful scenarios is the task of the humanities for Civilization. Waste is inexplicable outside of Civilization. The beautiful is the weaving together of thing, shadow and a special kind of form, a shape of everything as it is at some point in its existence.

No matter how much information is collected and archived, man will only ever be capable of knowing that he is mysterious. The current massive campaign to horde all the details of each citizen should trip all a free society’s alarm systems. The danger that accompanies a pretense of certainty pertaining to the people collectively and individuals - starting with identity, extending to ideas, portending future action - is substantial. It should be obvious, why that is so. Free thought, then liberated/-ing action is and must be mutable, because it occurs in the medium of the infinite. Sorting and referencing data in an archive is not a bad idea. After the fact, an event can be remembered, made memorable, through techniques that facilitate carrying the past and present into the future. As any nomad knows, however, there is a tipping point, when the stuff that helps you recall where you came from is too burdensome for forward progress. At that junction, one has to choose whether to settle down and build a library, bury the stuff in the ground and leave a marker, or just toss it. I guess it’s a fine line between garbage and material history, if you’re a dedicated traveler. Artists generally get this conundrum, too.

The simple projection is what happens when you have a light source, and opacity interferes with the light reaching the substrate opposite the source of the directional projection (which is “thrown” or “shot,” like a javelin, arrow or discus). The mechanics of reflection and projection as they are currently practiced are usually associated with imaging or ambiance. The presenter tweaks settings usually to optimize image legibility, estimating a proper, harmonious balance between blur and focus, for example. The presenter must also be into perspectival geometry for the framing of the image thrown. The neat thing is, the science of projection is a lot the same science of stargazing, of navigating. the science of man finding his place in the universe, but also the science of man getting from point A to point B on the globe. The thinking involved is very complex, as it incorporates the spheres and both linear and 3D framing. The context is peculiar, because of multi-faceted simultaneity. The everything-happening-at-once 4D thinking occurs while we’re engaged in mechanical problem-solving. As it is linked with computing the universe and our place in it. The practical key is the diagram answering the question, How are we to physically move around in it? It being the Universe, the World, the sequence of thoughts, the exhibit/object array, our complicating relations, noting space, place and time. Or some combination of these things. On levels of layered discourse: A lot of subtext or second order thinking seems to be concerned with questions about being alone, or lonely; or here, now; and what it would be like over there; etc. Art seems to extend from thinking about the universe, trying to get someplace, and what we think of and feel in the meantime.

Participation in art events is important for artists who test reciprocity, which is a marker for free exchange in the commons. Community art is peculiarly attuned to the dynamics of the 3 A’s: affinity, appeal and attraction; these characteristics promote the binding values of the people in the community, and are tied to reproduction as a force for the group’s sustainability. Thinking of art as a gift to be shared works if the artists’ room and board are covered. Free speech is an immaterial, with actual effects. The objectification of free speech in art allows for the practice of co-liberation in formal logistical exchange. I make something: that something activates a subsequent transaction; highlights the participants’ consciousness of freedom; quality being one of the prime drivers underwriting the activity; shared existence the reason for our giving of some unique thing back - and forward, to subsequent generations.

What is local and what is global? Is there a clear divergence, post-Internet? The answers to these vital questions are complex, convoluted, dimensional. In order to effectively operate in the new prisms of awareness an artist must cultivate 4D perception. The easiest way to do that is to practice 4D art. How do you get started? First, you follow your heart, your instinct, your intuition. So what, if that sounds to the cynic trite or a cliche! To begin creating 4D art the last person you should be paying attention to is the critic whose craft is rooted in pre-4D methods and understanding. The only thing a 4D artist needs to discover to make a convincing inception to an excellent body of work is what moves her (the artist). In other words, what matters most to you right now. Collapse into that!

Surround yourself with people who will play along with you in your 4D artist enterprise. It is serious work, believe me, so choose wisely. “Curating” has been a buzz word for quite a while now, and is polysemic. When people assert themselves as curators, they may be picking out a tee shirt and a pair of sneakers to go with their old jeans. Curation is a generic, now. Finding and selecting those curious folks with whom you will collaborate on 4D art missions should be one of your top priorities, as a 4D lead artist. Review their previous work, if any. Talk to them about your concepts. Show them what you are doing. Ask them about their schedule. Are they adaptable? Have a meal with them. Will you be able to engage in production with this person, over periods of weeks, months or years, and still enjoy a supper with her or him? Mainly, wonder whether or not you share affinity, with respect to art, and what is meaningful in life. Can you grow and change together?

The artist faces challenges that other people in society do not (and vice versa). I usually tell people who ask me about art life, and are curious about pursuing a career in art, “If there is anything in your life you can do that is reasonably enjoyable, other than art, that will support you and your family, you should do that other thing. But if you have to make art to be a whole human being, don’t ever let anyone dissuade you from that path.” Why is the life of any artist difficult? Well, that simple question requires a complex, convoluted and dimensional answer. If you are wondering, please do not believe the fiction a failed artist/successful critic writes on the subject. His advice contains only enough truth to support the massive untruths he propagates routinely in his job. Instead, ask yourself first whether you can commit to ink on paper, applied with a brush. Are you willing to be as free as that to succeed, on a moment to moment basis in your own life, with no one’s permission or advice? Will you dedicate yourself to improving as an artist everyday, at least a little, for the rest of your life? If you can do these things, to begin, the challenge you propose for others will likely reveal itself in short order. Especially if your art practice inspires you to hone your tools of perception, which are instrumental in the artist’s craft. When the artist looks clearly and the world and renders it as it is, what will the world do, when it notices your undivided attention?

Living in Bushwick for eight or so years, from 2010-18. I saw a lot. If you practice for decades at seeing and rendering the world as it is, you would hope to master that facet of your dimensionist practice, the same way you would to master vital aspects of your studio craft. I have throughout my career produced text in tandem with art. It is my perspective that the two have nearly nothing to do with each other. Each is a beautiful and wondrous pursuit in its own right. Where the two forms converge is in the conversation that occurs between and among artists, ourselves. I firmly believe that, whenever possible, those discussions should occur in the commons. Further, I would suggest that artists make fine citizens. A proficient 4D artist, as a by-product of his research and analysis, is chock-full of good data about the condition and circumstances, the realities, percolating currently in the society that artist inhabits. That society is wasting a prime opportunity by not approaching artists and inquiring politely about what the artist is seeing. Artist perception is itself valuable in a democracy, in the commons.

Photography, particularly the kind I am calling “JUNK” photography, is really a key to 4D art technique and theory. Why? The 4D artist practice is progressive, sequential and keyed to emerging and evolving patterns. Self-monitoring one’s progress is a daily element for in the 4D artist life. Speaking for myself, it is also one of the most fun aspects of what we do. One does not have to be an artist to practice and improve seeing the world. In fact, everyone who tries it benefits, and that benefit can be shared. The masses have in this area witnessed and produced an astonishing perceptual upgrade, since networked “smart” mobile phones and their onboard cameras have become ubiquitous. At some unknowable point the deluge of media exchanged in wired communities changed previous notions of visionary competition in photography. The people unleashed a monumental DDoS hack on the argument of who is the best photographer. That became the story for a while. Simultaneously, artists and photographers did what they inevitably do and followed the available threads as far as humanly possible. We are extremists, generally speaking, but only in specific ways. Leave it to the madcap amateurs to fall off cliffs for that influential selfie.

In the contemporary or the current, the 4D artist finds a subtext that permits anything. The artist then engages in a relationship with permissiveness that is to some degree, in some measure, defining of art and artist. The relationship itself is inexplicable. The accepted terms (like contemporary) are meaningless, for most practical purposes. The celebration of critical discourse in order to position it oppressively in relation to the artistic is a defining feature of the era. At this point an artist can exist or not exist, and the machinery of art industry will not “care.” Because waste is invaluable to the industrialists who benefit the most in the scenario. The other side of the scarcity coin in art economy is massive waste. The literature of art has become fixated on the discourse of scarcity, which is the common language of art institutions, academies, primary and secondary markets. Only rare voices like Greg Sholette’s periodically emerge to radically challenge the status quo. The internet threatens to upend the whole rotten contraption, but has not done so yet. What remains to be seen is whether the monopolists of the Big 5 will do to art what they have done across the spectrum of human enterprise.

Of more immediate concern is the lossy effect generated by the waste industrial culture. The romantic fictional narrative orbiting around the identification of genius is in jeopardy, undermined by an all-directional assault on the canon. The contemporary conception for art and society demands that all players orient to late Civilization or be reduced to ashes, literally and figuratively. That dynamic in itself is nothing new at all. What is novel is the virtual element at play in the configuration of personhood to self and collective. The fake or artificial person is represented dimensionally across virtual and analog culture systems. An avatar and a corporation share many synthetic characteristics. Success in all facets of existence - being and impacts, causation or activity - must be measurable. The problem with this logic is that loss is impossible to measure with certainty.

A correlate is the mountaintop removal operation for minerals, like coal. All the root assumptions are mad. The natural logic that would refute the industrial objective - energetic, material plunder - is set aside. The dismissal of the contrary thought as a means to an end is one of the defining characteristics of Civilization. When citizens jack into the awareness of this fact, they do so often in a state of duress. The system is designed that way, in order to improve the likelihood that citizen action will fail to derail the industrial objective. When people complain about the rigging of governance systems, they are outraged by the pre-existing conditions within those systems that improve the chance of positive outcome for industry over citizens. However, an accurate representative explanation or description for the inequitable status quo is insufficient. Adequate, meaning fair, representation is what the situation calls for. Depending on one’s ethical framework, punishment for those who rigged the system is also warranted.

A 4D artist becomes eventually an evidence specialist. To borrow a titular phrase from Bob Dylan, the art is a derivative of blood on the tracks. The concept of evidence, which is colored by its crime and punishment associations, echoes humanity’s prominent concern with legacy. Art happens within the impulse to produce a mark in passing existence. The presence of Time in the rich, diverse immaterial resources for art we are scanning is as unavoidable as it is impenetrable. The universe for man is indicated by the hunger in his belly and the lust in his loins. Time deals with those issues for each of us, in our duration. This is not a particularly gendered subject. The linga and yoni are structural twins, in objective dimensional analysis, or a paired set. Binaries are insufficient to satisfy the burden of evidence. Either and or cannot suffice to provision our collective and individual futures. Yet, we live in a continuum for sensation, while we are alive. Therefore our minds and bodies, our feelings, our Spirit, need something to do in the meantime (meantime meaning the time spanning birth and death.

Post-Internet is an ineffectual term of displacement. It really is a stand-in for Post-Occupy. Recalling the art world experts summoning fun art, light art after the collapse of OWS, I associate the panic and urgency of the frightened cultured collaborators (the aesthetic minions of the art investing superclass, who essentially exhorted ambitious “emerging” artists to behave like scabs) with the behavior of the soulless hacks of the 19th and 20th centuries paid by robber barons to produce tracts in defense of philanthropy to hide the industrialist propensity for mass murder, larceny and political corruption. Technologists tend to embrace a neo-libertarian ideology, contiguous to extreme neo-conservative and neo-liberal management approaches. In short they operate dimensionally, in the liminal space between material super-wealth and virtual power, property and reproduction. The new age dawning is innovatively dystopian, feudalistic and brutal. The pros, the experts got what they asked for from the wannabees. Then Walter and Jerry turned on them and kicked off the ZF thing. Such art world volatility passes for entertainment among the top players, for whom the system is rigged, anyway.

We can catch a glimpse of America now and again. The fiction produced by corporate media syndicates is catastrophic. The fresh solution for our collective malaise is the straightforward type. For-profit press is to be outlawed, along with for-profit medicine, war, education, politics, prison, surveillance, reproduction and so on. Profits are to be relegated to actual industry and production. Profit and loss must be relocated into 4 dimensions, along with perception. What is this 4th dimension, you ask? Why, it is the space in which the material and immaterial get together to have a party, to dance, to philosophize, to exchange digits, to make experience, to get it on! If humankind don’t recalibrate awareness to the next phase of reality, we hardly have a chance of survival in a recognizable, much less meaningful form. Our customs will disappear altogether. Art is customary. So is courtship. Money is not customary. It is the superimposition of King and Church. Today it is re-fabricated, -outfitted in the accoutrements of mercantile neutrality. None of it is to be trusted. All of it is blatantly fictional.

The desire for safety and security is a folly. Like any secret hidden in fallacy, everyone knows. The obvious is suppressed by the oblivious. Anyone and anything can be gotten to. The sham rich will discover this oldest of truths, again, and be surprised. Shocked, I tell you! A smack in the face can be applied as intervention to save the world. Fire is a tool for purification of the senses. Smoke can be a bath one takes to cleanse the surface of one’s fragility. Mankind has found so many decent ways to harmonize with an originally scary universe. Holding hands with another person is still one of the best, in my mind. Centering society on the cultivation of the young and caring for the elderly and sick is always called for. Insisting that everyone be fed properly seems rudimentary, does it not? We have seen what running our nation more like a business means, and we can now reject that notion with prejudice, and forever. Our nation, and art.

By 2014, I will admit I was almost entirely disgusted with the NYC art scene. What I witnessed as a participant in OWS, and what I experienced afterward, drained me of a lifetime of cultivated affection for the city and its artistic wonders. To holler “COWARDICE” in the atrium of MoMA or the Met or Gugg or Whitney or New Museum is not satisfaction, although we did that. To show by example new and better ways forward is not enough, but we did that, too. Throwing our bodies to the cops is stupid, but it was done, repeatedly. I couldn’t stand for it for long, because I have a propensity for righteous anger and a deep loathing of bullies of every stripe. I learned that the us against them binary was as finished as every other binary, unless the either/or were reconfigured for and within the 4D application. Explaining that fact to anyone still invested in binary society proved a pointless exercise. Post-Occupy, NYC became a parody, a faithless Bloombergian simulation of the Gotham I had fallen in love with as a young and impressionable artist. In the end I was ecstatic to leave it behind. New York City will always hate and seek to crush art and artists that contradict the property rackets. Judd was correct in his assessment. He was right to move to Marfa (and keep the pad on Spring).

& Around it goes. Art is a metaelement that no owner can possess. Intellectual property is a fiction, and a very profitable one for a few people and their syndicates and conglomerates. No one need honor the oligarchs, nor respect their ideas or position. America is not a nation founded in the interests of the aristocracy, new or old, well-bred and poor-bred rags to riches-types. Inventors are not a special class of citizen, afforded extraordinary rights and privileges. International tribunals and alliances, representing the interests of foreign tyrants and sun-gods have no especial portents vested upon them in America. The refinement of kings and their courts is rejected on these shores. Yet throughout our history the cycle of betrayal and invasion is spinning. Ultimately, for the sake of all who have been ravaged by the will of human monsters whose black souls desire most to dominate and thereby diminish their fellows, we must put down these beasts once and forever.

Yet I find myself watching Schnabel’s movie about van Gogh, and I am moved. The animation of a couple of years ago was fantastic, but for me it was a meaningful technical exercise, first and foremost. Vincent is almost a cinematic genre. The thought of Europe and its historical, fraught position on artists, and the destiny of van Gogh, it is terribly troubling, is it not? The long trajectory reveals everything about the meaning of art to Civilization. It is in the auction house, where the masterpiece of the future is slated to be sold, like a slave on the block. That America should be assigned the guilt for Europe’s vast slave complex, its genocidal obsessions, it sack and pillage momentum is a farce. Of all the nations on the planet, and all the empires humanity has projected, America least of all is condemned to the brutal mechanics of empire. Yet, the cynics and anarchists in their histrionic menace agree: our country tis of thee, they cry for blood. Whether of ignorance or willful displacement their motivation is emitted, the vacuum of their integrity collectively is manifest. The condemnation of America within art circles is keenly wrong. If not for America, for men like Pollock, art itself would have been doomed by the atrocities visited upon the world by Europe and its allies.

Why pick on Europe? I also watched a documentary on Yayoi Kusama. What to make of a media package like Infinity’s? Is an artist bio-pic produced in 2018 meant to inspire a following, mass buzz, improved value for the artist’s work? All of the above? In part the documentary is framed as a human interest story. Another facet involves a reassessment of Kusama’s import to the evolution of contemporary art practice. Another questions the biases of the art world decades ago, but also those of Japanese society. The portrayal of madness in Kusama is poignant in juxtaposition with the depiction of van Gogh’s. Is there a typical blindness in Kusama’s desire to achieve artistic greatness? I found the postwar artist’s ambition confounding. Is the artist bug viral. Was Kusama one of the first cases in Japan? The aesthetic exchange between Europe and Asia, and Japan specifically is worth reporting. After trade developed between East and West, European artists, including Impressionists, became interested in the painting craft and cultural sensibility of the Orient, in mostly the superficial or decorative quality, although it could be argued that the approaches to sketching practiced in Europe were impacted by greater exposure to Oriental techniques. How about Egon? The contemporary permits the isolation of an event from the consumptive meaning in which the event forms. The contemporary is the age of tactical editing. The management of the sign is transmuted into force, now. 4D production gaslights the retarding energy of management and contains it in the designated area for explication. Transparency, revelation, intensity and the visceral self are flattened in a virtual version of rules of aesthetic engagement, which countermand the permissive consumption of the contemporary maxim. Reanimation in the dimensionist model suggests a natural cycle, a seasonal communion that yields a properly structured additive element in the phenomenon. One thing leads to another (not-)thing.

When an artist opposes the art industrial complex, the position can be complicated. Opposition can arise from the artist’s moral concerns. There is much in the 1%er art world that is gruesome. The system itself is rigged and intertwined with the broader rigged, global networked economy. An artist may reject the art market on personal grounds. Relationships govern outcomes to a significant extent in the art industry. A meritocracy in the top tier marketplace is a productive illusion today. Artists reject the art scene on a local to global basis and vice versa. The trends promulgated through tools in the art press and in informal circles, influential to weak, promote an art processing mechanism that is hardly based on anything but bias. The aphorism that ART IS SUBJECTIVE is a fallacy that essentially serves the inconsistent criteria for success in the art world. The status quo established by the unknowing expert class in art ultimately preserves those experts’ unaccountability. The art markets are unregulated, which makes its corruption a certainty. An artist opposed to corruption is repulsed by the pettiness, the grotesque, the exploitative, the greedy and cowardly common in the art business.

The heroic artist was reduced to a fairy tale in the art world as a hedge against critique arising from the artists themselves. Artists who craved democracy in the art world, especially after the promise exposed by the success of New Deal era public art programs, posed a powerful threat to the elites who governed the art world. The vestiges of Court and Religious dispensations for artists survived the Depression to the extent that the systematic recovery could be effected over the next century. Today we see a new iteration of the old Civilization for art. The formidable network of global aristocracy featuring an impressively reorganized mix of old and new blood, new methods of managing and hiding wealth, including art investment, powers a decades’ long reformation in the humanities. The powerful, rich and their heirs are firmly ensconced as puppet masters in the free speech arenas spanning the planet. The control of media, communications technology, the most valuable means of production, military and political states, the courts is located in the portfolios of the world’s richest families and individuals, and their corporate syndicates and their formal and informal associations. A half-century program to destroy any meaningful resistance has achieved its many of its objectives.

The power of seduction is pervasive in the art business. The view from the top is incredible. The collector class is currently in possession of portions of the economy as great as feudal times. These individuals can offer an artist in favor practically anything one might desire. These individuals and the management and distribution networks they belong to or own can also effectively erase the value of the artist in disfavor, and excommunicate the work an artist creates. Seth Price’s essay can be understood now for what it was: a vague aphorism that displaced the potential logic for hierarchical causation at that critical moment in contemporary art; the dispersion that actually happened was directional, and its benefits have accrued to superclass players, among whom Price himself is positioned. The notable franchises (e.g., Koons, Hirst, Richter, etc.) are carefully represented in every sector of the art world topology. Their value is cultivated. If an artist is offered a place at this rich and putrid table, what force can propel him to reject the maneuvers of his incubus?

The myth of the male gaze is fragmenting the art world into divisions that ultimately empower the most powerful. The marginalization of those most dangerous to the plundering class, the elites who thrive on inequality is the subtext for much movement in art discourse. A good example is the transformation of art and new media discursive vehicles like Hyperallergic. This influential portal has skewed dynamically to a narrow editorial definition of art, post-Occupy. While promoting itself as a voice for the disenfranchised in and by art industrial forces, Hyperallergic is still simpatico with the art industrial system, as such. The utility of an identity-based neo-avant garde, hedged by elision of serious analysis of art world currencies neuters the platform. The method is typical strategy among contingent actors in the art and culture sector. Variations are indicated in institutional and organizational addiction to elite or superclass philanthropy. The tax structure itself in America is a brazen co-conspirator in the influence rackets that dominate the humanities. Art as a means for tax evasion and currency manipulation is a known quantity. The art market has long served the superrich in their efforts to launder money and move it across national borders.

The inventory of art available for consumption is huge. What is lacking is a national distribution network for original art that would enable every person in America to own original art. The alternative economies for art, outside the stupid, banal, mediocre 1% contemporary markets, hold tremendous promise for sustainable art commerce. The vision of future generations is at stake, and imagination is key to survival. Creativity and free speech facilitate the mechanisms that fix broken parts of society. The effectiveness of sharing economies woven into social fabric from the bottom up is indisputable, provable fact. Abandoning leadership to a few industrial winners is the kind of suicidal, self-defeating gesture that put Donald Trump in the White House, and left Bernie Sanders in the cold. The 2016 election made so much of the old political system transparent, starting with the blatant corruption consuming the Democratic party. Now, it is only possible to pretend that democracy in America is operative with the aid of fake news. In the art world, the situation is no different, in the sense that fake art and artists dominate the medium.

The art fair model is rupturing the fabric of democratic and national art scenes. The supra-networks that drive the commerce the fairs produce for specific populations of artist and collector and connecting agent are by now fairly well documented. The effects of the radical reshaping of art exchange is best represented in the Frieze phenomenon. The resonance of the contemporary art fair system and the parallel networks operating as periodic unified field promotions (annual, bi-annual, triennial, etc. expositions.) have served to weaken the centralization of power in location (e.g., Paris, London, New York). Brick and Mortar establishments are being crushed. The big winners of course are eco-nomad or supranational power elites. In tandem with freeport warehousing for art, the deleterious influence of the top art-buying cohort is incalculable. The super wealthy can purchase a masterpiece to remove it from public view.

In this environment, what is appropriate subject matter? The opprobrium embodied in the Zombie Formalism critique had a chilling effect on the artist-driven, “subterranean medicine” swirling through cultural and academic discourse, post-Occupy. Some of the few remaining professional art writers, including a handful of influencers based in New York City, effectively reoriented art evaluation to the snarky banter of the ubiquitous beaters and survivors who manage to appear at every noteworthy event over decades. As one might expect. So what if their criticisms so routinely prove faulty! So what if they turn out to be venal, co-opted moochers and parasites, who cling to their vestigial seats near the power tables! So what if their exclamations and proclamations eventually dissolve upon close scrutiny! These players learned social media, developed followings, understand click-traffic, are attentive to management’s needs, and can project the proper setting of obsequious or free presser depending on context. Now the critic argues that he or she knows subject matter when he or she sees it, and that’s it. The largesse of the privileged, and the selection of winners and losers to please the powerful, is a bane on art for everyone. God bless Robert Cenedella! Whatever, the gesture! Efficient direct action is another thing. How desperate will the people become, to unseat their oppressors? Artists?

Is it possible for art to exist outside the star systems that dominate the markets? Of course, we might opine! Yet it is a kind of complicity to suggest to any economically, politically, socially oppressed artist that external validation in any of those key sectors is “so what!” Validation is invaluable to all but a few artists. Art is itself a reciprocal confirmation of humanity, by humans for humans. Validation is humane. To block the artistic progress of an individual or group is tantamount to inhibiting spiritual evolution. It is evil. Depriving a generation of artists the necessary validation (material and immaterial) involves decoupling people from the means of support for their own choices, their values and their meaning, all of which supply art with its urgency and currency. The elites understand this implicitly, and they explicitly subvert the power of democratic art at every level, simply by co-opting the process of establishing art hierarchy. Instead of a logical criteria for quality in art fashioned from the ground up, the elites insist they are best at championing the best in contemporary art through their purchase and promotional authority. Clearly this contention is false.

In fact, the art world for the 1% is outdated, is obsolete. It is not 4D. The availability of every element required to establish meaningful art collectives of every description is available via the internet, and has been now for almost three decades. What is most obvious now is the unprecedented threat posed by consolidation of culture power in the sphere of the technologist. The battles among the Big 5 are like the movie monster wars in the old serial Godzilla franchise. They would be hilarious, if they weren’t so horrifying to the impressionable imagination. The imposition of alien sensibility is one of the main ingredients in the rise of digital and virtual conglomerates and robber barons. The inversion of definitions of creativity to suit the narratives of tech industrialism (e.g., Jobs) approaches mythological in its hyperbole. The very real problems caused by overwriting the analog aspects of human interactivity are eroding any fundamental legitimacy for technological democracy. The very existence of Zuckerberg, Bezos, Gates, et al. represents a profound policy failure in America. The value lost is similar to that extracted from the Black Hills, or Cerro Rico. These men and their co-conspirators are not heroic. They should be tried for crimes against humanity. Instead the people get show trials, media hearings, with no consequences for the richest, and most harmful, among us.

The marketing of technology is now its own shadow. We see this with products like Google Glass, but the axiom applies across the sector. Workers in China burning themselves alive to protest conditions in factories producing products like iPhones are not just a spin and containment exercise in brand damage control. The industrial standards and practices at Amazon distribution centers are not anomalous instances of bad apple-ism. The destructive effects on cities, towns and households caused by corporate technological power is immeasurably high. We are witnessing a boom for a few key players that precipitates a bust for almost everyone else. The tech utopian vision of the future has panned out for almost no one. The savvy of Bill Gates and his ilk is the same type of anti-democratic intelligence that previous robber barons mustered throughout the massive crises their lives and interests engender. These people are sociopathic fools who believe the hype about themselves and their products, at all costs, no matter what. They should be redistributed out of existence.

We must not conflate the power of these desperate and despicable men and women with the power of nature, of beauty, of art. When an idiot suggests that Andy Warhol is the GOAT, he or she must be shouted down. When Eli Broad, or the Walton heirs, or Steve Cohen, etc., present their collections in vanity museums designed to compete with prominent private/public art foundations and institutions, or gain influence and opportunity through the pay-to-play boards of those very foundations and institutions, and expect our collective approval, respond appropriately with outrage. The most recent case is Glenstone, a billionaire’s museum, the unfortunate name of which evokes claptrap suburban condo communities. The collection is what one would expect, including the big Koons garden dog. When the will to power is rewarded, sometimes the powerful hedge the hatred their horded treasure manifests through the absolving caresses of the Muse, through art, and through the sensation that art giving can supply. We can reject the premise that the people will enjoy poverty with a sugar coating of art at the end. This formula is the embodiment of "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche." What is the appropriate French revolutionary response?

The artist is as fungible as money, in the eyes of the new oligarch collector. The main qualification for any artist is viability. This characteristic translates to complicity. A second string of artists consist of those who overtly refuse complicity, but crave the limelight and prosperity that accompany their selection into the global 1%er fold (e.g., Martha Rosler, Hans Haacke, Ai Wei Wei, Thomas Hirschhorn, and so on). One of the most egregious episodes in contemporary artist fungibility was Occupy Mana. This production, curated by notorious 1% art world ass-kisser Phong Bui of the Brooklyn Rail, which I once wrote for (for free, during Occupy, while Ted Hamm and Williams Cole were still co-editors at BR), was an absolute dumpster fire of complicity. The Mana Contemporary project is the brainchild of Moishe Mana, the mover mogul, whose agenda now incorporates dimensional principles for empire building simultaneously rooted in all sectors social, commercial and political. Establishing “campuses” across America, billionaire Mana is using art and culture to grease the wheels of property acquisition, global corporate integration, providing essential services to Israel and various Jewish interests here and abroad, and to enhance his personal wealth, prestige, power and reproductive capacity.

The commons is a mushy place for imagination, given that the zone for free speech is diminishing at a staggeringly accelerated pace. The peculiarly American exhortation for the inventor to create something, unique, novel, something that will catch on, has legs, take off, is not strangled in our throat by interleaved property engines and promotions. For artists the non-competition is fierce. The consumer portable culture industries exist within enormous corporate portfolios. The giant conglomerates operate as tandem network markets, supportive of pyramid or ponzi schemes. Their configurations help justify the financialization of global economies, a stupefying range of creative destructive business practices, political interventions that include extreme lobbying (see ALEC), social-shaping forwarded by strategic or tactical philanthropy, and more. Combined, these syndicates push along the destabilization of nations, including democracies like the US and UK, through privatization programs and horrifying policy follies. Conferences like WEF and Bilderberg are the operational tips of the iceberg for these globalists, whose “pioneers” include David Rockefeller, Henry Kissenger and other democracy-hating heirs and agents. MoMA is a nexus for this invisible power machine.

The diverse practices of sampling for image creation and a host of other virtual production have definitively retooled the visual topology. The measure of identity now is disheveled. Metadata is a digital standard for authenticity. Blockchain is disrupting this approach, while appearing to concretize it. The philosophical lens through which these phenomena uncover themselves is in a word infinity. The infinite is the corporate personhood dream, it is the novelty of Time itself, it is the evasion of measurement. Infinity spawns the finite within the confines of a history that is forever malleable. History is incrementally conquered by they infinite syndicates and their finite temporary workers. Gigs are the intercourse between historical corporate man and the proverbial modern common man. The average Joe and Jane the honey pot of human resourcing. The demographic target of the disposable income markets (of which art is only one) shift through the graphs of actuary tables, and other data accumulations. One’s profile is one’s destiny in the corporate hive mind. It is a stretch for most people to conceive how their circles of friends and relatives, interests and purchases, education and profession lineage betray us to the corporate networks, which we now know, thanks to Snowden and others, are part of a complex, global Surveillance State.

The unreliability of sense data is for the first time in centuries not the primary issue of thinking Western man. The uber-schism is the debilitating factor, the crisis of mind. The game of psychoanalysis has begotten industrial and military operations that threaten the chemical, physical, biological man and his environment with total obliteration. Science is pointing a gun, a great, HUGE gun at the head of thinking man, and asking him, “Well, do you feel lucky, Punk?” Although scientists deny it, because the field of professional science is once again subservient to the whims of the super rich, and no longer an action-wing of an able democracy. If Elon Musk has in short order fallen from a whiz kid perch like an entrepreneurial sci/tech handsome egghead Humpty Dumpty, then where does that leave NASA, Detroit, and so many other public goods. Like the kind that built the Internet and the analog Freeway system. The Branson billionaire class have lots of ideas for running everything like commercial fiefdoms as a feature of their individual liberation from all constraint, and the divine rightness of that certain recipe for cataclysm. Game of Thrones in essence is a Self narrative, which explains its unsurprising popularity. The 99% cannot comprehend that our characters are the white walkers, the mob, the cannibal masses, come finally to eat the rich. I prefer Mr Robot, myself, although I am no fan of schizoid television or its Freudian roots. Reality affirms that the predators and scavengers will wait for us to appear, because we are their food. We can make them die waiting.

I had the good fortune of growing up among strong Americans. They are dying, after long, industrious lives. I gathered over the past half century of monumental change a scrapbook of personal history that chronicles the significant relationships of my life. Art is a presence in my trajectory. The value of art is variable among friends, family, lovers, people with whom I’ve worked. The price tag is untethered to the object, its figures blurred by contiguous desire, all economy fading by the minute, a groan dubiously posted next to art itself. When juxtaposing death and art, the synthetic element should be love. This is not my opinion. In a way, I could care less about that, because I believe in an autonomous zone for art, where even love must succumb. This is the opinion of Man. This is the inevitable power of Woman. No one should have ever believed Benjamin, who understood nothing about liberation and reproduction. He proved this with his suicide, and admitted to it in his texts. All who have attempted to further Walter Benjamin’s legacy with respect to art are complicit in his grift, his graft, his long con. A patsy is a patsy because he won’t get off the hook, and that is because of his weakness (Boris Groys).

Victimization is a poor subject for art, but not for the reason one might think. The provision of thematic color to content creates a set of problems that have naught to do with aesthetics. Brutality is simple to represent for a colorist, because the brutal is easily understood, if one exists in a brutal age. We are rich in brutishness currently. The colors are primarily blue and red, set to black, with accents of ochre and shades of green, on a spectrum of natural to unnatural. The shading of a brute composition for the purpose of illustrating victimizing of creatures great and small is minimal in effect. Broad strokes are best. Splattering adds a dose of realism to the image. The best sketching mode for representing the victim is the caricature style of the day. Humor and horror couple properly in vernacular art, which is the purview of victimization content. Yet this is really weak material for art, because art is never for propaganda. Propaganda infers conversion and conquest, which are antithetical to art free of Civilized malevolence. Action and reaction do not occur in art in exactly the same process they do in other realms, like science, politics, war and society. Art itself has no true language of reason and justification outside itself. Thus it resists being for or against anything and anyone. The color is not simple. It is complex, magical and beautiful, and it is ageless, even as Time changes it.

How important is an overview, which is a kind of monotone recursion device? The value of high altitude representation or vision is contained in the purifying nature of distance in the imagination. The stench of failure is not noticeable high above the fray. The howls of casualties are lost in the winds. The noise of grinding machinery becomes a comfortable silence disturbed only by thunder or wind, periodically. Ultimately, even those disturbances give way to the inky black of yonder, if one can get high enough. Drone-view presents an interstitial territory between the satellite picture and grounded visual (and other sensual) experience. Not too long ago, mountaintops, planes and skyscrapers, etc., offered the attraction of heightened awareness for us. Oh, and I guess, drugs and alcohol, which get us HIGH. Now the drone is transitioning into civilian life, after proving its success as in war, as a spy and assassination robot. The drone is one of the latest inventions with military industrial applications that is being repurposed for peacetime, and its smiley face is being fabricated through a gaggle of non-art art channels. These include digital (online) media, new cinema production, video art, performances, projection- and monitor-based installations and vignettes, and so on. Drone technology and art actually have nothing to do with each other. AT ALL.

The structures of vision can no longer be reduced to geometry. The math is become infinity, literally. Dimensional numbers are not contained in 2D or 3D borders. The most important immigration of our Age is the crossing of boundaries artificially separating less-than 4D and 4D territories. On the other side of the new Great Divide is a topology that to old eyes is phenomenal, wondrous, stupendous. Its additive nature is inherent. Its quality is incessant and unavoidable. The material factory it proposes is hinted at by so-called 3D printing. The doping systems for altered awareness will make obsolete many presuppositions about personality and mental health. Whether this is a good or bad thing remains to be seen. In the context of this essay, by the way, the immediately previous statement is humorous in kind. 4D dissolves and resolves seamlessly all form connected by immaterial. Transubstantiation is a normal feature of 4D environments. The miraculous is a facet of the status quo, not an anomaly. The first definition that will require revision is the definition(s) of a 4th Dimension, which has multiple meanings across multiple disciplines, and has become a confusing term as a direct result. The language of convolution, which better resembles our brain structure, must be adopted over time to supplant the recursive narrative for a dimensionist actuality.

The conception of Self will be reassessed. It will necessitate a complex image of one’s personhood as a distributed entity. The components are combined virtual and actual. The scope of the Self consciousness spans inner, outer and secret arenas of existence. Performance itself constitutes a fourth spatial reserve, a convergent quadrant wherein the action of material on immaterial (and vice versa) occur. Who, who does what and why, and the logic of intent and motivation where it exists as a visible phenomenon is the grist of 4D performance. The action of Self is not reducible as such to any particular narrative, except with the precondition of fiction as a benevolent determinant. A kind destiny for each and all is the 4D mythos, but bathos and pathos are the content of 4D art. Reciprocity is an ameliorant for competition among actors, for hierarchical disembowelment, for taking and rentier behaviorism, and for many other corrosive expressions of self. This bracing filament for art, its cyclic stem, its root pattern, is as ancient as humanity itself and will remain unchanged through the transit into 4D perceptual arts. The gift Spirit is the modal preservation of human consciousness, our fundamental intelligence or Mind.

Art serving multidimensional people in the iside-outside-private-publically performing Selfie-ness is hard to visualize in advance. As a producer of such art, now for several decades, I marvel at the smoothness of the transition between less-than 4D art and vision and 4D+. The perceptual advances are inexorable, and their inevitability renders them invisible to primitive Civilization. Advanced tribal cultures celebrate the new perception, even if they have their own issues to contend with during the radical shift. For those emerging from ancient visionary society into the new thing, the PTSD is terrible, as is the tight-in-places crossover between the oldest ways of seeing and these unfolding forms. I can suggest a forgiving practice, balanced with cruelty for those who made crime against humanity, in many cases by criminalizing humanity itself. The pollutants injected throughout the world and its inhabitants at the behest of overlords will take millennia to undo or process. It will be another age before people can assess the damage. I don’t know if there is an art for healing such wounds, but I hope there is. My efforts as an artist, if I were ever to encode my own artistic aspirations, are to help platform that art, to seed it, and to propel it into the world, like spores on a strong warm summer wind.

We wish for freedom. Only the slave master prefers no one, not even himself, to be confident in one’s comprehension of freedoms. 4D perception can be, must be a vehicle for freedom. It cannot grow, progress, evolve, otherwise. In such circumstances, in the event of 4D’s demise - whatever that might look like - humanity itself perishes. Will the planet die? Who knows?! For people, in our Self-mode profile, how will the human-absent future matter, in any conception we can possibly frame? The absurdity of speculation beyond the existential, past our own cancellation, the ultimate negation defies all poetry. No conjecture can propose an image that survives our species’ survival. When people seek to prioritize earth over man, they underestimate the power of mind to subvert its own logic. Stupidity and intelligence are form and shadow of Mind over Spirit over Body. Sensation trumps the mechanics of knowing and easy logic of belief, at least temporarily. As long as people delude ourselves with metaphor, the language of causality will convince us to do immensely stupid acts. Art is never metaphorical. Descriptions of art always are metaphorical, and therefore fictional. People wish themselves to be art itself, or at least art-like. Such is the root of evil, as much as money, or the goofball pretense to divinity for earthy creatures.

My bones ache. My body is growing older by the day. Strangely enough, I do not think of aging as a linear process, but that is due to willfulness on my part, overthinking really, a refusal to surrender to the sensational as a matter of course. Survival is practical and speculative as woven form. I would suggest the Dream to be the proper and best reference for the experiential in human nature. You can walk in my shoe all you want, but if you can’t tune into my frequency, man, you’ll only get a fraction of what my “like” is like. An artist starts with the personal universal, which of course is an insoluble conception. The impossible is perfect for beginning any journey, and a necessity for anyone with epic aspirations. Art life is what it is, and it will not be exactly the same for any two artists, which is true of life in general. The American artist is an endangered species, a chimera, improperly diagnosed, just another citizen. God help us, art is the signal flag of sunset. We hoist it at our own risk. Still, it is good to recognize there are more of us than ever before, in the history of the world, as far as we know. Going back to dinosaurs.

I started writing my dissertation text by hand in autumn 2015, and finished more or less two years later. Most days I would pound out pages, sitting at OSLO coffee shop in Williamsburg. I had sold my camera gear to help fun my second intensive summer session at the European Graduate School. At the time, I had an idea that after decades of shooting photography, I needed to reboot my artistic/optical/vision apparatus anyway. I needed see the world again, minus the mechanics of framing and executing the shot. In short I tricked myself into believing I had temporarily paused my photo craft, when, actually, I was switching to a different, new mode. The pictures in CONTEXT reflect the new approach. The method integrates meta-elements, pulled from the 4D VyNIL "card" sets. The virtual patina on the images is specific to this series, but the processing techniques at this point are the product of many years' practice. The CONTEXT series narrative summary might read: These mobile phone camera pictures represent junk that happened while I was writing my thesis in Brooklyn. Plus things that may have been going on in the back channels of my brain, while the rest of that organ was occupied with 4D theory, systems analysis, aesthetics and so on, for the four PhD books I wrote between 2015-17, give or take a year for pre- and post-.

A 2019 AFH Manifesto Poem Story Post

I found my voice in a holster

I follow an echo into a river

No mystic venture strips a hull full of holes

This heart is riven by hollow promises

Lost to me.

I moved my people cross a desert

Torments of winter we bore

A dark wind in their fingers, curling and shaken

Roots shearing underground breakin

witnesses

Lost in the sea.

A cravin not literal but actual hunger

my relatives lingering on the edge of camp,

fearful of a Shade flickerin

by a tipi door flap. You hold my hand,

snakes held @ bay by a fire in a shallow pit,

dug out of the blue clay

with a pick and a spade

I know we

Will find our lost keys in the shallows

or the weeds along a walking path

to a car park.

Teeth rotting in my mouth and foot

Swelling too

stinking

a new anguish

With each rising sun. I tell the boy

An eclipse is come,

and a misting of rain will

Wash your sorrows away.

Don’t look fellas,

Don’t look, she ~ no more

can she hear you.

I thought

she would not tarry

by a dock in a gale

Waves as tall as towers

I got a carved stick to beat a hand drum.

I made a good noise like sea lions

en e foyggye fieyelds teh flrrrighten doom

as ‘hey marrcht oos doon.

Scaly bodies are hidden

In the nets of fishers who line the banks

with torches

bangn pots loud, hard w spoons.

Still they are coming, a witherin’ hatred.

Nay carved a shield beyond reckon

No pendant or ward repels the advance

Ne surrender is offered & none will be given

We join arms, lower our heads, keep eyes upon them,

their line is crimson, then black

B’nighted, a shufflin horde right ‘pon oor main,

a clang of metal n flaish shorn asunder,

we stood strung ayn solid buoy

You did wonder ifn I tells it fair and flush, I does

Child, I do.

A massyv m bled out into yon crick

gore soak’d soil round here n here n thyar

everwun like ta cheer, n ta weep

‘neath ay bluddy full woolf moon

bay a dismal niche.

We ladled clain watersh n ate smoke faysh

scorchin flames n dancin merray,

scratching prayers inta tin foil,

reciten poems (pomez), sungs bye d scuore.

Scatterin survivors fled in pickups

Or by train. The choppers hunted stragglers

up ravines n th’ Column.

Seamstresses staid t stitch a history,

but tis us who knows wha happen’d, sure.

You child.

Our axes a bone an hair

Hung on a wall yonder, amidst trophies

Ar foinest heirlooms, b’God, see m?

Woven ena tartan ew don aych marnin

‘s a message you wull carry t kith and tew kin,

A warnin to any who betray their clan folk

Nstead to chase fame, bluster n gin.

Gold, dat sairpnt

it shines n silver,

sparklay emeralds and busy numbers

snaky payper n deeds. Yes

Some will not bow nor borrow, nor sway like reeds.

We plot grain seeds in th’ beds naow dry and dreamy

with harvests watersh we feed m a trickle then

a flood

The shoots swell to the sky

then oor mad prophat he howels out for rivets

to fall n fly upon the beast of arrows

to strip m o all her waste o gran’ fortunes,

to bury m in comeuppance of measures

stoneless, toomluss

To end m for good

to end m wi brute pleasure

Together we waves o warrior human

to sing m away for-e’er n a day

a day a heroes n tales adorned

w smears o rosy paint on oor torn glad visage

Zuccotti [Photo by Chris Borrok (2019)]

Proposition 4D

I INTRODUCTION

{or Prop4D} ~A Proposal for the Disposition and Dispersal of the 4D VyNIL paintings: Toward a new economic model for the exchange of original art and the compensation of the artist; for the establishment of sustainable, equitable systems in arts and culture.

IA

Paul McLean is an artist, currently based in Astoria, Oregon. In 2017 and -18, McLean produced and documented the production of a series of paintings, consisting of distinct sub-series that combine to form a distinct body of work (4D VyNIL). The art is unified by applied materials, concept, methods of application, visible consistency, size distributions, color, composition, narrative and other relevant means. The 4D VyNIL series was presented to select individuals through open studios, virtual platforms and a comprehensive installation (“HOME SHOW”). The production of the art was documented throughout its period of creation.

IB

Throughout his career the artist has engaged in the exchange of art, beginning with his own work. He has also worked in art businesses, periodically establishing his own, launching hybrid commercial exposition projects of many varieties, studying art and cultural commerce and management, engaging in attaching discourses, and experimenting with innovative, creative approaches for showing, thinking about and distributing art.

IC

Proposition 4D will stipulate the form of immediately selling the remaining, available artwork of the 4D VyNIL series, which is its greater proportion for a pre-set fee ($45000); designate a resale percentage fee (10%) that will be remitted to the artist upon the buyer(s) selling of the art, in whole or parts; map additional conditions benefiting all stakeholders through the establishment of an Estate/Foundation operating on behalf of the art and artist, heirs, selling partners, etc.

NOTES:

This project will be framed as a standalone artwork itself, connecting to but distinct from the objects in the 4D VyNIL series. The author/originator of Proposition 4D (Paul McLean) is also its “artist.” The structure of the Prop4D exchange addresses significant design changes in the art economy, since 1980. In 2018, as in 2008 and the aftermath of that Crash, calls to reform the art market have generated little or no meaningful concessions from the most powerful players in the field. Sensible solutions are readily available, but almost certainly will cause major disruption of existing hierarchies in cultural economies. Change and growth must occur, and the question is whether the change manifests incrementally and rationally, or chaotically, as in violent fracture. I think the central point is the value of expression in society, and the best nature of expression for us. The material aspect of art creation and craft is incomprehensible to anyone who has not had the good fortune to practice. Compensation for lifetime commitment to art, culture, democratic society is an indicator of civic health. Those who dismiss the utility of the artist to a system dependent on free speech for its survival deserve the reality they get. Current events in America are a clear demonstration of this last statement. Inhumanity is artless in the extreme, and cruelty is anti-art. In art, even a forgery tells the truth, in the end.

Socket [SOLD]

II PROSPECTUS

The gallery and/or dealer, or a syndicate of galleries and/or dealers will collaborate with the artist to properly place the work with appropriately engaged collectors, mount exhibitions, establish institutional programming and publish related documentation and supporting materials and texts. The keyword is commitment.

IIA

The sequence for management and development of the work follows the recognizable trajectory. The purchased work is organized and catalogued. Whenever possible, individual artworks or series and groups of artworks or a collection is sold to a viable clientele, or syndicate of clients. Every sales contract will include the assurance that the owner will permit exhibition of the painting or sculpture purchased upon request. 4D VyNIL and the associated art will be presented in multiple locations and types of venues over time.

IIB

The model for the proposed relationship of artist to representative(s) is based on successful examples from the 20th Century. Dominant models today (Supergalleries, art fair, multi-tiered exchanges, both virtual and brick’n’mortar, or hybrid, etc.) aggressively disrupt the former’s modus operandi, all-directionally. The development of New Media in conjunction with traditional formats for art enables an expanded creative platform and means of distribution. The projected representative must be competent across the spectrum of available market options.

IIC

The integration of the art with additional programming is essential. Advancing 4D systematically is vital to the total artist’s project. The value of this feature of Art for Humans is profound, extending beyond current circumstance. The opportunity to collaborate with practitioners from other disciplines presents the artist and the participants with novel applications for envisioning a shared future. Establishing an archive will be a priority, in the organizational structure of artistic production.

III ARTIST STATEMENT

An art form is an agreement, if the art is social, cultural, commercial. Art itself is none of these. The object of art can be formal, and simultaneously reject formalism, among other things. The artist, likewise, can promote the exchange of his art for production purposes, and as an extension of civic freedom. The environment for art is rarely conducive to subtlety. The community for art is seldom supportive of artistic liberty. The issue is the sequence of transactions, in the interests of practicality and prioritization. Management of art is flatly an oxymoron. Yet here we are.

The disintegration of equitable public-private systems, including one for art, is accelerating and reaching critical mass. Although one can always find a barker or rube who defends the status quo at all costs, as long as the paychecks arrive more or less on time, the erosion of reasonable and enlightened exchange for all is everywhere evident. At such times, an artist is no less responsible than any other citizen in defense of democracy. What are artists doing? Critique, parody and irony are more useless than art, in opposition to tyranny. The pursuit of happiness seems a ludicrous response, but it is not. Insistence on the value of art is never wrong.

But the predicament is dimensional. The monopoly players in the 1% art market have co-opted the valuation of art from the democracy. Nothing new about this state of affairs ~ art is essential to human society, and anyone who wishes to control his fellows must command the terms by which art is recognized and exchanged on a macro-scale. Even if we have historical references for free, democratic art, it is up to us to demand it now.

[WIP]

No Place Like Home [Be Smart]

PART TWO

Smart Home #6 / 1200 x 1200 pixels

1

The consumer technology industry conducted a wide and broad push to sell the Smart Home concept. The foundation for the campaign in part was a massive shift to Cloud computing. The Internet of Things, Smart Cities, Driverless Vehicles, Drone Delivery Systems, Google Glass and so on, are initiatives backed by fortunes networked into syndicates to establish tech-visionary futures IRL. The creation of these pervasive dimensional systems to some extent requires the displacement of preexisting systems. For example, the Constitutional guarantees of privacy are an impediment to free data exchanges upon which the data-extraction/-exploitation models of the current monopolies and many networked companies depend. Deals are being forged among and between wealthy, powerful conglomerates and governments, components of which are projects that may define how much of the developed world operates. Key aspects of the negotiations include communications and media systems, electronic infrastructure, cybersecurity, national and international regulations on multiple fronts, profit and cost distributions, definitions of labor, energy allotments and so on. Most critical are understandings on public and private domain.

2

The inversion of the domestic is a defining characteristic of the era. Home is a complex formulation for the creation of individuality, in its relations to ascending orders of collectivity. The ideal home is a construct that drives much of the modern imagination and is essential to the realization of “the American Dream.” Magazines and media programs are devoted to the subject. Significant portions of the market economy are driven by home purchase, furnishing, maintenance and fueling. The configuration of family to fit the conception of a “perfect home” bends the imaginary toward familial and domestic benchmarks that are at the least difficult to attain. The images propagated into the perceptual media flow defining our families and homes are problematic and require substantial critique to parse, much less validate. The wild claims of the futurists in domestic network technologies regarding the value of IoT and Smart Homes etc. echo those for time-saving devices of post-War/mid-century appearing in ads on TV and in daily or monthly periodicals, appealing to house wives and their well-employed husbands. The question is, to whom, exactly are these new shouts for adopting the latest home-focused consumer technologies meant to appeal?

For the artist, there are many Home-focused considerations, some of which are shared with one’s neighbors; others are aesthetic, and these can be brought to bear on the range of social, economic, political issues that are relevant across the populations of one’s house or building, neighborhood, town, city, county, state, nation and world. An art active in the home is one that, via the web, can ripple throughout the perceptual fabric of humanity, as never before. The sustainability of that phenomenon is uncertain. This is a rich field, the art of Home. For one example of so many, check out Isaac Layman at Elizabeth Leach Gallery this month. A 2017 documentary that speaks to so many points identified with contemporary artist-home dynamics is The Secret Life of Lance Letscher. Whatever one’s identity/profile, most likely there is an artist reference that qualifies as a model for Home-oriented material (and immaterial). Given the extent to which the borders separating norms and margins in our social domestic narrative have blurred or even evaporated, the content for one to fabricate an imaginary for HOME to conform to preference and urge is practically unlimited. “Everything is permitted” - but the question remains, is this notion derivative of Corinthians, Nietzsche, Assassin’s Creed, or any others on the long list of people who have abandoned the dictates of conformity? Artists, or the romantic version of avant garde artist, are vested with super-powered permissiveness by which creative liberation is vested. LoL.

Linda #10 (2001, PJM)

3

Again, all of these projects for Home and home consciousness are fictional. Lest the reader need be reminded, the Crash of 2007-8 and consequent great recession were predicated on the sub-prime real estate loan market and the derivatives attaching. That in some measure is the accepted narrative. What is also true is the re-distribution of wealth from all economic cohorts to the tiny fraction of “high net worth” families and individuals at the pinnacle of that Cartesian model plus the minion class for the fractional winners. The correlation is complex, with plausible deniability present in all rationalizations. Austerity as a remedy for the crises was prescribed by economists enlisted by and from the minion class for the super rich. Sometimes the super rich themselves lambasted the “takers” classes. The disharmony among the stories and images assembled to justify policy, proposed solutions, and visions of socioeconomic reconciliation in the aftermath of the most massive (global) redistribution of wealth and property have forced extreme approaches into the mainstream (witness the Trump phenomenon). Fakery is a 4dimensional marker now, in civil - and uncivil - discourse. The thin veil hiding the wizardry facilitating the consolidation of power and capital in the possession of the few over the many is dissolving. Now what?

“Manhood” ~ small screen video for mobile device accessed via QR code during “A New Dimension” exhibit opening at Silver Shed, Chelsea/NYC (2011)

So much of the critical and curatorial action since Occupy avoids confrontation with the rich and powerful collectors who benefit most from the reformation of the international art economy over the past several decades, which parallels and reflects the macro- trends in the global order. Embracing a narrow band of acceptable parameters for “art” that addresses the Problem. In “A New Dimension” at Silver Shed in 2011, I presented over two dozen original videos that were Internet accessible via QR codes were posted on web pages, throughout the exhibit space, and elsewhere (through posted flyers, invitations, ads, downloads and so on). A linked platform of web pages and blogs were created or dedicated to the exhibition, which mirrored or counterbalanced another 4D project, Gramatica Parda, which took place in LA the previous year. In the content of the production, the blend of artists and themes illustrate the range of options available to confront the Ogre of the status quo. I chose Michael Bloomberg, then Mayor of NY, as my 1%er boogeyman. Keep in mind, this was pre-OWS. Over the 8 years I lived and worked in NYC, the relationship of artists to power clarified dramatically. Hilariously, the critical tactic of blaming the victim/killing the messenger (i.e., Zombie Formalism) gained traction in top-shelf anti-aesthetic threads. The methods employed in promulgating the ZF meme are typical of those used in almost every industrial press to justify the radical process by which power aggregates authority in media.

Animation still for Vide01 for “A New Dimension” (2010, PJM)

4

The brutal, banal actuality is that many novelties in artist praxis are non-verbal submissive displays directed at the powerful collector, the institutions and businesses that cater to them and the media that serves them. Pop-up shows are not interventions. They are necessary due to the oppressive conditions governing spatial allocations for public, cultural production. The location of artist activity on the web, at home, in transitional zones are not conceptual alternatives, for the most part. They are responses to increasing restrictive tendencies in society. The instances of outrageous gratification, such as artists selling sex to collectors for cash and coverage, are not viable as meaningful resistance. They indicate compliance. Cowardice is not artistic, and cowardice in 2018 is found throughout the art economies, educational complex, governmental administration for arts and cultural, the art press, and the massive ranks of self-identified and professional artist. Cowardice is also profusely located in the people who opt out of support for free expression and instead permit the wholesale co-optation of democratic society by “free” markets and those few they are meant to serve.

Smart Home #8 (PJM, 2018)

No Place Like Home

PART ONE

“Coal Tipple, WV” (PJM, 1986); photographed on the back porch of the family home by the artist’s father.

1

Home is the main circuit of my art. It has been that way from the get-go. Home is the prime 4D concept, and can transform casually or causally into the art’s medium, the architecture, the studio, content, framing and more. The philosophy for art is shaped by home. Home is potentially the central marketplace for art, and its concrete destination, or at least a station at which the object art pauses its movement, and the idea art is envisioned. The definition of home is extensive and can encompass the metaphysical and the geological meaning, as well as the political, communal or social. Home, since the advent of the personal computer and the ubiquitous wired network device has blurred and morphed to become to variable degree virtual. In its absence or negation, home is the nexus for the modern issue, the focal discourse of value orientation, the core of identity and its lack. The correlation between home and sexuality has never been more profound and complex. All these conditions for home - and there are abundantly more, including excess writ large - swell and diminish in the tides of one’s and the collective attention matrix. The circumstances of unfolding modernity enforce the power of the home to map the significance of people, from birth to death and beyond. Home ultimately is the modulation between permanence and the temporary, material and immaterial, memory and loss. Home is a key to human relations, and this is undeniable, for the nomad or the native.

VIDEO [“Come Home” (Description ca. 2006 from the AFH YouTube channel)] ~ “An installation element for ‘Seven Episodes: A Unifying Dream Interrupts Causality :: The Casualty Animates the Space’” ~ Notes from Artist Statement: "Seven Episodes" is a 4D production, and the fourth in a cycle of exhibits ("A Prayer For Clean Water") presented in installations, lectures and performance in Austin, Texas, at St. Edward's University and Shady Tree Studios, October through December 2005. Information about the Austin project can be found on my website. "Seven Episodes" features new works I've completed since arriving at CGU, as well as purchased, "found", re-contextualized and appropriated objects and elements. "Seven Episodes" also presents creative contributions from DddD collective artists (01 SlewCrew AFH) Seth Strope, Sean Gaulager, Shane Kennedy, Max Abrams, Adam Cotton and model.

Armory Show booth 2001 (PJM)

2

In a few days, in early December, the “art world” converges on Miami for the fairs. The art fairs of the past several decades have substantially reformatted most art markets, but especially the fine art, contemporary, global, high net worth marketplace. The change in prime venue for art has coincided with other important trends - political, economic, cultural and especially technological. Not surprisingly, the type of art and artist that generates market success, and the support that success attaches, has evolved. The globalist shift for art since the second World War means that a manufactured Chinese art market parallels a Western art market that is rigged for ROI for its majority players in an undefined or -regulated scenario. The stakes for the institutions, businesses and individuals who dominate the main channels for art exchange have never been higher, as indicated by valuations. Yet, the narrative of booming commerce for international art is accompanied by the subtext of collapsing cultural infrastructure, precarity for the vast majority of the art-centric demographic, a diminishing art public and increasing resistance to the altering status quo. The most resonant protestation echoing through the art halls is the cry against inequality. The sustained noise in the distance is the rising fear of cataclysmic war and climate-caused catastrophe.

Still #33 from BONE series; manipulated digital photograph of LA Natural History Museum vitrine (PJM 2005, for Gramatica Parda at ANDlab, Los Angeles)

The phenomena outlined above have Home in common, although the dynamics of the domestic are inconsistent from thing to thing, point to point, image to image, person to person, place to place, and so on. If you ask someone, Where (or What) is your Home? - what is the answer, beyond a street address? What are real home economics, right now? In America, is Homeland Security a settled matter? If an energy company decides to construct a pipeline through your home, what recourse will you, your family and your community have, if you say no? Command and control for privacy and property is not a clarified hierarchy today, if ever it has been, at least not for everyone, even a conceptual Everyone. Whether the access to and freedom within your domestic space is enforced or undone by the government, a syndicate of corporations or yourself is an open question, we have discovered, and not through a free press, generally speaking, or not initially anyway. How safe are you in your residence? Does your notion of Home extend beyond the walls of the structure you inhabit (possibly a box, a tent or a car) to a yard, into the village, town, city, state, region, country, continent, planet you inhabit? Is your supposition of home contingent on race, family structure, religion, socialization, politics, economic class and whatever additional or other associative order pertains to you, beyond location, location, location? If home is a place, what else is it? How much of the rest of home does any of us get to choose or reject? Or will it be defined for us, through systematic superimposition?

Enamel on metal, hand-painted sign (PJM, 1998)

3

The first independent gallery project I launched was Freedom Gallery in my home town of Beckley, West Virginia in 1998. We survived a few months. The rent was minimal. The attendance for events and the foot traffic was a function of extended family connections, high school friendships, word of mouth, little blurbs in the local paper, flyers, a sign, pretty much what one would expect. I still have the hand-painted sign. My ideas about art and community are profoundly affected by the experiences that have accumulated over the decades at the cross-section of my Appalachian roots and my leaving and returning there, in no small measure due to my thinking about the place when I am absent. Collective and collaborative exhibitions like HOME01 and SEAM01 emerged directly from the connection to my mountain state home, even if the actual expositions incorporated a much broader conception of home and memory of home, since the source material came from a pool of artists’ contributions. “Where My Feet Stick to the Ground” and the other Scotland-focused shows, artworks and projects I’ve produced have their point of origin in my ancestry, which is to say, the home my ancestors left when they came to America. The ancestral home is a configuration that binds blood and bone to place with a history that is a task to maintain, much less recover, if it has been interrupted through generations, by trauma, displacement or other pressures. My first solo exhibit at Eidolon Gallery in Santa Fe, which happened roughly a decade after I completed undergraduate study, took on the divorce industry. In short, that show dealt explicitly with the wrenching effects of home dissolution, and the predatory apparatus contrived to consume those whose domestic life has failed.

McLean residence, circa 2008

I think there is a subtle logic that operates in my work, which has to do with the precept that a church is God’s house. Given my religious upbringing, it was inevitable. Frank Stella and others have poignantly written about the architecture of Western painting, about the centuries that painting served the Crowns of Europe and decorated the earthbound portals to the divine. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel was an important reference for my early work, but so was the reactionary, visionary production of van Gogh. Add to the mix the window/grids of the comics, the book illustrations that constituted my visual education in graphic imagination and the strange haloed projections of movies and light-emissions of television, and the platform for interpreting the sensations of my generation clarify. In essence, this combination of multimedia is the precursor of the Internet. Mine was the last cohort to experience the universe before it was compressed for mass dissemination through near total monopoly channels, and to witness the transfiguration of all language-based exchange into data packages. I chose in the early 90s to immerse myself in digital processes and media on a more or less equivalent basis with my artist practice.

Swimmer (PJM, 2003)

Launching the Art for Humans web platform was less a launch and more an incremental build. One inspiration I had for the network structure was the typical New Mexico barrio compound/home. The adobe haciendas that the nortenos constructed were additive, as in add a baby, add a room or a wing. The family expanded dimensionally. AFH grew along the same rhizomatic lines. Daily activity did involve filling pre-existing structures with content; translating analog data to digital formats and archiving them transparently. The long-term aggregate effect seemed to align gracefully with modular design aesthetics. Reflecting on the AFH program, now in its third decade, I marvel at our naivete, and work ethic. If you think of program components as building blocks or links, it’s easy with hindsight to see how dependence on anything that could be consumed by what would become the powerhouses in the field was a weak org-design element. Autonomy over time is terribly important for technical reasons, but it is a key determinant in how one survives.

Spash page for AFH Gallery Online, circa 2005.

The virtual AFH, during healthy phases, was nicely harmonized with actual AFH. The promise of the web in the late 90s and into the mid-00s is hard to remedy with the shitty version that exists now. A home page in that brief period could be as sexy as a custom paint job in California car culture Classic era. A web site could be a smack in the chops or an epic adventure. The best ones were a bit of both. It was possible to spend the same time and energy constructing a net-based production as one might invest building a brick and mortar home or facility and/or undertaking a commercial venture or starting a family. What many of us failed to understand was the fragility of the medium. A prime characteristic of the virtual thing is its likelihood of disappearance. While this characteristic applies to the actual thing, too, the time frame is very different. Virtual and actual decay or decomposition both stink, if it’s your entity that’s dissolving. A virtual crash can be like a light switch turned off.

“Where My Feet Stick to the Ground” installation view [Peanut Gallery, Nashville, TN (1996)]

The Home Show in Astoria is a natural crescendo in the arc of this thread in my art. It allocates the proper distance to the subject, and the duration makes sense. As a concrete exposition, the display of vinyl paintings is coherent enough to establish conformity within the building. The art and architecture seem fitted, not contrived. The exhibition meshes with contemporary art protocols for emotional neutrality in the white cube. In its first stage, Home Show reintroduces moving image and web-based elements, affording the paintings their moment to project into the environment without media interference and distraction. In future iterations, there very well may be media assets and 3D objects that interact within a presentation environment for 4D VyNIL. For now, however, that is only an idea in an imaginary, formative incarnation.

JP’s backyard, 2009 (PJM)

HOME SHOW #1

INSTALLATION PHOTOS [Session 1] >

AFH UPDATE [November 2018]

OBLIGATORY PR

November 19

Art for Humans and Good Faith Space are pleased to announce “HOME SHOW #1,” an exhibit of paintings by Astoria, Oregon artist Paul McLean. The show will feature artwork from McLean’s 4D VyNIL series, completed between 2017-18 in Brooklyn, New York. The vinyl paintings on canvas, wood panel, paper and vinyl records will be installed in the artist’s Astoria home, for viewing on Saturdays November 24 and December 1, from 1-5PM. Light refreshments will be served.

Paul McLean, ca. 2001

Paul McLean has been a professional artist for thirty-five years. He has exhibited in galleries, museums, educational and cultural institutions, arts foundations and alternative art spaces. McLean has served as Lead Artist for art collectives and participated in many multidisciplinary creative collaborations. His art craft extends to camera- and computer-based production for still and moving images and printed matter plus online graphics. McLean has maintained an internet-based platform (Art for Humans) since the late 1990s, and has been an early adopter of digital processes throughout his career. McLean has given numerous lectures, artist talks, contributed in panel discussions, published texts, and been the subject of art press features. He hosted art talk radio programs in Santa Fe and Nashville. His theoretical focus is 4th dimensional art and systems. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame (BA), holds Masters degrees in Fine Arts and Arts Management from Claremont Graduate University and the Drucker School. McLean is currently undertaking doctoral work commenced at the European Graduate School in 2010. The paintings in “HOME SHOW #1” are thesis art for the artist’s doctorate candidacy. McLean was born in Beckley, West Virginia. He and his family recently relocated to Astoria from Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY.

PAUL MCLEAN’S CURRICULUM VITAE > https://www.ox4dafh.com/pjm-cv/

“HOME SHOW #1” LOCATION > 725 11th Street / Astoria, OR / 97103

• To preview the art that will be on view during “HOME SHOW #1,” visit the Paul McLean’s catalog website (www.goodfaithspace.com) and his nexus site (www.mysticnovad.com).

• Updates and more info are also available on AFH social media (www.facebook.com/artforhumans and www.instagram.com/valubl).

To contact the artist, phone 615.491.7285 or email art@artforhumans.com. You can also RSVP to Lauren at (916) 206-6564 or email laurengmclean@gmail.com.

Gallery One > HOME SHOW series #1-49

Astoria, OR

DISCLAIMER

I am composing what follows during Mercury Retrograde. I have a head cold. I recently quit smoking. If the text fails, and is incomprehensible, I attribute that failure at least in part to these conditions and circumstances, and beg the readers’ forbearance. As it is, the text certainly lacks a focus beyond the loose idea of Home, and the event that is slated for the next two weekends, “HOME SHOW.” The narrative loops in several temporal and spatial zones. The illustrations perhaps are meant to tie the author’s ideas together, but potentially add to the readers’ confusion. Well, at least the weather has been nice!

Astoria, OR and the Columbia River

CONTEXT (Speculative Artist Statement)

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I’m operating on instinct here. That’s the big takeaway. It’s taken a few months - meaning, nearly a year - to get a handle on the Valubl Project, as it is manifesting, or emerging, and whatnot. Our relocation from Bushwick to Astoria [OR], and the manner of that intranational migration’s unfolding, have in certain aspects exposed a rather magical nature within the progression of events. Magic is a blending substance. I think this is especially true, given the historical moment. The nicely ordered sequence [LoL, in retrospect] of our arrival/moving into the Astoria house, the fast-paced but organic acquisition of new relationships, fostering an incremental integration into this vibrant community… I’ve only partially projected these matters into social media channels. The narrative, the adventure, is happening outside the sharing networks, I suppose because I am being protective over it, or at least reserved about it. Although I am I would say transmitting enough of it in code, as a form of poetic fiction, narrowly dispersed. What is the strategy, if that is the tactic? It’s a function of being done with the current mode of discourse, the mandatory fixations, and the saturating quality of all-directional messaging that predominate most through-puts. I mean, I’m certainly not beyond a good rant, but I also realize the efficacy of public chatter at this point is minimal. To pursue healthy, democratic activities outside of the catastrophic miasma engulfing the “world,” the “country,” the “people,” is to do so absent the expectation of attention, openness, receptivity and with a realistic assessment of resource availability. Art, in this context, is a Chimera.

IMMATERIAL (Prospectus)

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The transitional or interstitial situation of our Astoria house at 725 11th presents an excellent opportunity to install and exhibit the first two phases of the 4D VyNIL paintings in a residential, domestic structure. A house like those I grew up in, that my granny and aunties occupied. My “exhibit design” is inspired by foggy memories of those relatives’ homes, or rather, of my feelings about those places, as they exist in my memory, now. Who knows how much any of my recall is real. It’s ghosts, memories & shades of memories. I should mention that the HOME SHOW program is also linked to the revival of an AFH social media platform, coinciding with the production of the 4D VyNIL series. (Anecdotally) we noticed that posting pictures of folks collecting the new pieces, hanging them in their offices or homes, attracted a bunch of “LIKE” and “LOVE” and “WOW” clicks from the AFH virtual community! I guess that trend registered somewhere in the noodle, and helped activate the conceptual machinery that eventually builds a quasi-orthodox artsy exposition, like HOME SHOW.

Photo + handwritten caption : Dr. William David McLean (RIP); posted to the Instagram of John David McLean; light digital editing by PJM ~ SUBJECT: 217 Granville Avenue, Beckley, West Virginia (ca. 1976); Mrs. McLean pictured; Christmas decoration design by Dr. McLean, with contributions by John, Paul, Marc & Lois McLean.

The weird thing is the Astoria house and the vinyls seem to have been fitted for one another, which is odd because the paintings were executed in Brooklyn in the AFH Studios in Williamsburg and transported to yonder Astoria (Oregon, not Queens). Prior to our arrival, I had only seen the house through JPEGs and during a couple of cursory walk-throughs with our awesome landlord Tad.

4D VyNIL paintings installed in clients’ home (2017)

For perspective > In the past, I’ve worked from intricately detailed exhibit schematics for installations in galleries and institutions. That’s not a description of our “Home Show #1” modus operandi at all, though by all appearances it may as well have been. More or less, I have enough wall space to hang every art work - a rarity. If this were a fictional narrative, I would say we have an anomalous premise, possibly suggestive of unbound precognition or prefiguration, or as a Celt would put it, Second Sight. Aggregating these impressions I’m outlining, to frame this particular, original Valubl enterprise in its initial stage as anything other than dreamy is starch. I’d be happy to pretend that converting our new place into a temporary gallery space was the plan all along, but that’s not true. What is true is there is no plan, as such. [From The Way of the Gun (in clip ~ :50) > Parker: I think a plan is just a list of things that don't happen.] Still, in a parallel formula or zone, maybe as an unconscious mechanism or subliminal function, yes, Home Show #1 is the stuff of Destiny.

LOGISTICS (Formal Analysis)

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Our new home is a hundred+ year-old former Presbyterian rectory, and features a first floor with a spacious room for entertainment and a dining room, a large kitchen and hutch and a half bathroom. The second floor contains bedrooms, bathrooms and lots of fixed storage. There is an attic and a basement, both of which have good features. The attic has views of the Columbia River and downtown Astoria, and the basement is big and rigged for light industry, plus more storage. Given the history of our home, what little we know of it, we are still safe in our assessment that the architecture was never specifically dedicated to the exhibition of art, and definitely not contemporary art, as such. Yet, the structure does offer some allowances for the purpose of fine art display, such as the hanger ledges in the upper moldings of the living room. Previous tenants had used various types of hanging devices in wall surfaces; however, we don’t know exactly what they exhibited. To summarize, we have traces of the artifacts that previous occupants placed throughout the building, but nothing concrete.

My friend’s tipi (New Mexico, 2001; 35mm slide)

Notation: A “brick and mortar” construct juxtaposes permanence and the temporary simultaneously, and therefore is inherently 4D. Adding virtuality to the structure in a simulated present (a presence) only enhances the dimensionist quality of the Art Home, or any other metaphorical kind of domicile. The “Home Show #1” project has me thinking about the myriad projects that artists have undertaken in which home is a central component. Artists show in homes when other exhibition avenues are inaccessible for whatever reasons. For some artists, home itself is the subject, and for others the artist at home is the subject. The links between painting and sculpture and residential architecture are ancient, if one considers a cave naturally architectonic. But how relevant is home to art, now? The ratio of people able to own homes is fast diminishing. The loss of the dream of a family home is contiguous with the loss of the dream of family. And remember the significance of the “Home Page?” What does that term signify in the so-called post-internet era? Should we accept that a virtual home is simply a figure of speech?

Duart Castle (1995, PJM)

The castle as “big house” incorporates the notion of domesticated art utilized for the arc of civilization with its identified property (e.g., Windsor Castle). Art inside the house rationalizes the property itself. Just as the museum rationalizes the civilization. In America we have cultivated tremendous diversity for art within buildings, as a direct consequence of free speech. Any citizen can show whatever she likes within the confines of her property, regardless of standards of taste or decency, and nobody can do a damn thing about it! Is this a good or bad thing? Well, I would argue the conversation about whether it’s a good or bad thing is a good thing! The binary critique (good/bad) is effectually and permanently discredited, and moving forward, in the 4D perceptual field, the alternatives (to good/bad) and range of critical categories are infinite. [MILO: So… inside/ outside the four walls of the sure thing/ we will all have to negotiate for asylum/ & navigate the ravages unleashed upon us/ in every direction. / The distinction between windows and mirrors will blur. ]

HOME 01, 2001 [PJM; 6” x 6” digital output on 3M adhesive-backed film, A/P]

CONCEPT (Proposition)

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Is there a unified or definitive concept of Home today?

“HOME” is a subject that has been a consistent driver in my work, research and theory. I think the same is true for most artists. Nowadays, the corrosion of domestic security for almost everyone is the common thread shared by the great proportion of mankind. The mind of home and family in the West is dominated since the 20th Century by psychology and its affiliates sociology and anthropology. These disciplines, if that is what they are, usurped the territory from religion, but also the various mandates of formal relations delivered via economic, political, social, tribal/geographic constituency. It is, however, patently insufficient to blame the now-ancient campaign of dislocation and disconnection on these recent soft-target newbies, regardless of their contributions to world suffering.

“Freud” > Not an Artist series (2006); MGT/MFA Project

To say that nearly nowhere and for only the few is home life in its dimensional aspects stable, secure, safe. How this scenario came to pass is a question endlessly pondered, but rarely with any viable solutions entertained, and nearly never are culprits properly identified by name, location and occupation, in conjunction with intentions of thorough and properly severe justice rendered.

“Mound of Buffalo Skulls” > Animation still (#205) ~ CONTENT 5, Sequence 12; To view the series of animation cells, click HERE.

Art and artists are certainly engaged with the phenomenon, but it is difficult to see how the artistic is any better a platform for confronting the many crises attaching to home than public policy, journalism, academia, media and so on. Art, due to obvious conflicts of interest, often must recuse itself from the forum. I refuse the route of capitulation, because I have not lost hope in the anonymous, untitled artistic urge to contradict the destructive and enslaving capacity in humankind, most poignantly expressed in the act of creating art, despite environmental madness of all descriptions and traps of conscription at every turn. If there is apparently no home possible anymore I will paint paintings that the Universe will insist be provided a home.

HOME is central to some of the big global, cultural, economic and political issues of our day, such as immigration, climate change, gender (roles), identity, inequality, occupation and mass destruction. The “art world” exists, at least at its pinnacle, on an axis that spans institutions, intermediary zones and the “homes” of collectors. Art migrates from public to private space via market paths, black/white/gray scale. Evidence of art migration is to some extent projected through legacy and new media, as well as through the dedicated communication channels employed by the powerful to do what they do in the spheres in which they operate.

“Movin’ Out of Bushwick, 2018” (PJM)

The super rich and powerful tend to maintain multiple homes and procure properties to suit their activities. The connection between home and art is at that level the binding stipulation of property, of ownership, of possession. The nature of class circularity revolves around the proposition that one’s possessions define one, and that one acquires one’s possessions through programmatic action and/or inheritance, and sometimes luck. The 4D VyNIL series is an answer to the question of Home, and in its dimensional qualities activates the conversations I believe are most important about home, about art, about the future of both as embodied in the artist, and projected through his vision. The Home question, particularly as it pertains to art, is then a discussion about survival, one in which I am prepared to engage.

Jon Randall performing at HOME01. Margaret Tolbert paintings in the background ~ at ruby green Contemporary Arts Foundation (Nashville, 2001)

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PRECURSORS (History)

Home, I guess obviously, was the central theme for “HOME01,” a complex [01] collective exhibit with several phases and multiple performances launched in 2001 at ruby green Contemporary Arts Foundation in Nashville. The first stage of “HOME01” presented a curated expo for Gainesville, FL artists. The curating duties were undertaken in a collaborative spirit, shared among Virginia Cannon, the artists and myself. The program promoted the value of geo-cultural exchange. The second and third phases involved re-hanging the gallery with artwork by the 01 collective. It is difficult to summarize content of “HOME01.” Each participant was invited to undertake and present work that dealt with “home,” in its dimensional conception, and/or as a visceral, experiential phenomenon. The 01 collective consisted of artists, academics, writers, dancers, musicians, architects, scientists, healing arts practitioners, filmmakers, technologists and more. The range of expression and consideration the collective brought to the task was profound.

Invitation for the 2001 H0ME01 project

I think I’ll leave off a comprehensive review of HOME01 for another day, and simply copy a few paragraphs from the proposal submitted to ruby green for the project’s approval. Photo documentation for HOME01 is HERE at AFH Flickr.

Exhibit Concept "Home" is a three-phase exhibit, featuring new and preexisting work by contemporary artists based in Nashville, Gainesville, Florida and New York City, New York. These artists represent a broad range of disciplines, including traditional 2D and 3D object-based media, New Media (Internet, digital media, video and audio), architecture, graphic design, performance and installation media. Some will contribute elements to the exhibit, which might be described as found objects. These elements will further elucidate the exhibit concept.

The exhibit structure will consist of a three-phase installation and four Live Art events. The installation will change each week, in order to provide the artwork exhibited with adequate presentation space and focus, and to encourage viewers to return to the exhibit more than once. The Live Events will consist of lectures, multi-media presentations, performances and a fashion show. These events will serve as artists' receptions, entertainment and fundraising opportunities.  

The concept for the exhibit is "Home". Each participating artist will produce new or pre-existing work, which will explore some aspect of this concept. The correlation of the work to the concept will be overt and direct in some cases, and more subjective and oblique in others. The interpretive diversity within the exhibited collection is a function of the freedom of vision afforded the participating artists and the conceptual agenda of the curator.

Erin Hewgley > HOME01 : “Blended Family” / Performance and installation [ruby green Contemporary Arts Foundation (Nashville, 2001)]

For an expanded textual description of HOME01, click on the title block (the hot link that says “Show more” below the set title). There you’ll find the general project outline, timeline of events, list of participants and more conceptual description, plus acknowledgements, attributions, etc. Holy cow. When I reviewed that doc, I was blown away by the ambition of this program, the quality of the creatives involved, the diversity of work shown and shared, and the complexity of the production machinery. I do want to drill down into that as a project, since the critical coverage I believe HOME01 warranted did not really exist for us, and hardly anywhere at the time. I submit that HOME01 represents an important episode in a lost history for hybrid arts post-y2k. Consider that the exhibit cycle + its Live Art Events happened on an accelerated timeline, and was facilitated in large measure through the fluid collective network we called 01. The logistics of transporting the Gainesville artists’ work to Nashville, installing it and the prodigious media hardware utilized throughout the space and project, maintaining the complicated new media on display, coordinating performances and the openings, the receptions, the happenings, plus more, more, more. There was a lot of printed matter, on the walls, for invitations, for press. We furnished ruby green with cool furniture for a week. Garth Williams demonstrated the Myriad, still in my mind the baddest-ass Flash-based net.art ever created. Erin Hewgley in a school girl costume running a chain saw through couches and basically a complete two-part family living room suite, LIVE! We documented the hell out of it all, but compared to what it was like to be there? Pictures and videos only show so much. It was phenomenal. Really.

CONTENT: A Decade Since

Over the years I have been asked many times how artist “success” happens, by people who are curious, or who have aspirations to that end, for themselves or someone else on whose behalf they will inquire. The so-called art world’s processes to many are opaque. I can share anecdotally on that subject.

Preparing Yarger|Strauss for “CONTENT”

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It's been a decade since I launched the 4D/multimedia exhibit "CONTENT" at Timothy Yarger Fine Art in Beverly Hills. Then it was called Yarger|Strauss. The show opened the week of the Crash - September 18, 2008. The exhibit culminated a sequence/series of installations and projects that included Content productions at Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown (LA) and my MFA thesis show at Claremont Graduate University, plus online iterations, texts and media. I feel like it's a good time to revisit that work, which, due to the externalities/environmental circumstances, was subsumed in the panic and chaos of the moment.

Lula #21 (24” x 24” digital Mimaki Hi-res UV print on acrylic)

The sequence of events that culminated in the Yarger|Strauss exhibit unfolded over a span of several years. I visited a friend in SoCal who lived in a cabin on Mt. Baldy. One evening we ventured into an Inland Empire town (I forget which one) and I saw a combination of media that I had not encountered outside one of my own collective or solo projects. In the early 00s much of the art market was resistant to what would commonly be termed New Media. However, many artists were enthusiastic about combining and integrating disciplines and technologies, analog and digital processes, 2-3D materials and approaches. The blurring of lines between theory and things in the art context was being pushed by virtuality in myriad directions and ways. I noticed indications that LA was a fertile territory for what I define as 4D practice. The proximity of the moving image industry to Silicon Valley, the presence of a relatively robust Contemporary Art scene and market, and the abundance of (art) schools were a few markers I considered. Coming from Santa Fe/Nashville/Austin with a good dose of NYC, the emerging field in LA was more impressive the deeper my research drilled. Rosamund Felsen at that time represented Pat O’Neill, who possessed massive film credentials and skills, and whose interests encompassed gallery practice. I read a very exciting essay about one of his shows, and paid a visit to Felsen’s Bergamot Station venue to meet both Pat and Rosamund and view the work in person. I had brief conversations with the artist and the dealer. In the latter case, I told Felsen I was thinking of making a run at the LA art scene. She recommended I get an MFA at one of the programs in and around the city. That’s what I did.

Animated Patterns by Paul McLean Audio by Max Abrams

My friend’s father (Walter Mix) was an accomplished painter and well-respected instructor. He directed me to visit with a friend of his who was still on the faculty at Claremont Graduate University (Michael Brewster). After an amicable interview, I applied to CGU and was accepted. I proceeded to obtain a Masters in Fine Art, and continued on to obtain a Masters in Arts Management through a new program at CGU’s Drucker/Ito School of Management. While an MFA student, I ran into a Nashville acquaintance (Bryson Strauss) at an art store in LA. During our exchange, Bryson told me about his venture with Tim Yarger and asked to see my new work. I invited him to the campus and my studio, and he was very enthusiastic about the pieces I showed him. We stayed in touch and Bryson followed my progress. He especially liked the Mimaki prints I produced in the summer between my first and second years, which I exhibited at Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown. He returned to preview my thesis show with Tim and they offered me a show on the spot, and took some of the Mimaki Pattern series with them! In a few months “CONTENT” would be installed and on display at Yarger|Strauss in Beverly Hills, next to Sotheby’s…

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The “art” that would appear in “CONTENT” - in my 4D aesthetic schema - is not really Art at all. The title of the series of five exhibits, plus media and projects - CONTENT - reflects the trend to displace art and disrupt its place in the cultural hierarchy with a generic term that applies to a vast aggregate of diverse material and immaterial products and productions. Content and context are intermingling across the demarcations of so-called Old Media and yielding stuff that includes hybrids, simulations, reproductions, etc. In the middle of the first decade of the new millennium, I endeavored to directly confront this phenomenon in my thesis work and its derivatives. The objects, images (still & moving) and audio I would integrate in CONTENT 1-5 would represent “the tip of the iceberg” of my findings, emerging from the research and practices undertaken in the course of my MFA, plus the projects - like AFH Gallery Online/Chinatown. Which brings us to a juncture at which art and tech talk converge. For most people, both art talk and tech talk cause one’s eyes to glaze, and the average person beyond this point will be doubly bored. Significant differences between art and tech talk exist. The most important, I would say, is that eye-glazing tech talk tries to explain how technology works. Eye-glazing art is designed to put the normal individual in a catatonic state, or in a visceral state of repulsion, or in a state of resigned disinterest. Tech talk generally speaking is made by techies whose intention is to explain how technology works, its function. Art talk generally speaking is made by non-artists whose desire is to obfuscate, minimize or divert the listener or reader from any actual function for art. To put it another way, art talk pretends to define or describe the “WHY” of art, and fails. Technologists can communicate with equally good technologists about the technology they share and be understood. This is rarely true for artists, unless they (the artists) talk about the craft aspect of what they do, in which instance they are in fact discussing art technology.

My CGU studio, circa 2006

With this assertion in mind, I’ll continue. Parallel to the narrative about how CONTENT at Yarger|Strauss materialized and/or manifested is another narrative. Simultaneous to the unfolding story of this artist’s having a solo show in Beverly Hills blue-chip gallery - a signifier of “success” in the art world by most art professional standards is the story of Art for Humans’ “success” as a platform by and for art/artists, with additional social media applications. The AFH platform by 2008 annually reached or was consumed by hundreds of thousands of users (and bots). The content posted on the sites in the AFH constellation or network of web portals (altogether) generated hundreds of thousands of downloads. The AFH platform consisted of multiple proprietary blogs created/using a variety of software/formats, a wiki, archives for still/moving images and illustrated texts, net.art, social media (which was a shiny new invention), and more. I developed a solid practicum for systematically toggling between analog art production and digital “art” systems. My 4D methodology enabled this. Unfortunately, six years after 010101/Art in Technological Times (SFMoMA, 2001), the art world writ large was still mostly confused by the mashup of art and technology. Linking dozens of tumblrs to twitter via twitterfeeds and SEO and amassing thousands of friends on MySpace, etc., to create a media channel that serviced brick and mortar art industry, propagated real time artistic collaboration, distributed artist-produced content, provided ample context for actual art operations, dispersed ideas globally with unprecedented speed, and did all of this exciting stuff and more outside cultural regulatory regimes not only was now possible, but I was doing it, and doing it on a relatively minuscule budget. And none of any of this fit very comfortably in the high-end art market retail gallery setting.

CONTENT 3, ART FOR HUMANS GALLERY CHINATOWN (2007)

What to do? The conundrum of meshing web-based and computer-generated creative practice plus collective work with the typical sales model of a Beverly Hills art gallery in the mid- to late 00s required some mapping the sweet spot in a field of Value + Means/Meaning + Values. The cultures, the modes, of the “New” and “Established” would have to be meshed, but how? I love such problems, because the solutions can be applied beyond the parameters of the art thing. The lead-up to CONTENT at Yarger|Strauss and internal reviews afterwards did involve a fair amount of communication on these issues. I would love to tell you that the outcome was marvelous, but the truth is the enterprise was flummoxed by the tsunami-like onset of the Great Recession, which rushed over us the week of the opening of the exhibit. For context: Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy the weekend of September 13-14, pitching the financial sector into a panic. Those were scary and grim moments for everyone, but for a certain sliver of the art markets, the fear was palpable. Deals were crushed. For example, a Lehman employee only a few weeks prior had approached Yarger|Strauss to arrange the installation of several Lula and Pattern series Mimaki prints in the LA Lehman offices. I insisted they be purchased and not rented, no matter the “exposure” value. A few weeks later Lehman was gone. Who knows what would have come of that deal (and the pieces) had the installation gone through. As opening evening for CONTENT neared, each day brought more bad economic news. The effect on the show was profound.

Installing Pattern series Mimaki prints at Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown (2007).

Even now, I find the memory of that time difficult to revisit. Although the accounts of the Crash of 2007-8 mark its beginning in December 2007, we had potential clients returning from the big European to-dos in Spring/Summer of that year (2007) refraining from purchases at AFHGC based on money manager advice, warning that a monumental shift in the markets was imminent. The phenomenon impaired the business model we had envisioned for that project. When sh*t really hit the fan, it was hard not to sink into despair, hard not to feel like the investments that I’d made to manifest CONTENT had been wasted, through the intervention of destructive forces outside the scope of our endeavor, economic conditions beyond our control. Many potent lessons arose from the experience, on the nature of art in relation to society at large. It’s important to recall that, prior to the downturn, the art world was booming at an unprecedented pace, and only a few players were sounding cautionary notes. It is sobering to look at that period, relative to what’s going on today. The consequences of the Great Recession on every aspect of American life continue to affect in our politics, culture and finances palpably.

CONTENT > MFA thesis exhibit at Claremont Graduate University (2007)

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Turning to the art itself, I find the CONTENT exhibit a rich and inspiring mix of elements, ideas and technologies. Eventually, we chose to discard the paralleling virtual aspects of my practice and interests to focus on newly produced potentially salable objects, with a reduced sample of New Media, plus an introduction to my camera-based work. This decision was indicated by the gallery architecture, primarily. Integrating projections and monitor-based presentation with mostly light-reflective 2- and 3D pieces is, as anyone who has attempted to do so in a white cube scenario will likely attest, is complicated logistically. Projections and monitor-based images do best in darkened space as a rule. Light-reflective materials require proper lighting schemes and gear. Yarger|Strauss’s new gallery location was smaller than the previous iteration, with less open wall space. The Mimaki prints on acrylic are luminous, even jewel-like. They really pop!

“America,” the 6’ x 6’ entry piece and the largest object in the exhibit, pointed to a direction for the evolution of the CONTENT series that was conceived but never materialized (along with other elements in the presentation). The mix of photographic, digitized representation - and narrative - and repetitive, decorative patterning framing the image illustrated the possible configuration of stories embedded in visual components, a reference basic web design as well interior design. The patterns I was producing could be translated to both environments (web and architecture, interior and exterior), plus a plethora of objects. One of the cool features of the Mimaki printer I was BETA testing for Harvest Printing, which manufactured the Lula and Pattern series, was its capacity for output on shaped (3D) surfaces. My patterns, additionally, could translate to fabric design, for covering furniture, bodies, flatware, almost anything that can be printed upon or mechanically woven, utilizing new technologies. The upside was tremendous. This facet of CONTENT amounted to prototyping.

Shane Kennedy and I fiddling with the OpFeek installation in the Yarger|Strauss booth at LA Art Show (2007)

The (4D) experimental threads were developed in my MFA work and the AFH Gallery Chinatown were not foregrounded in the Yarger|Strauss iteration of CONTENT, but they were there. Initially Bryson and Tim were much enthused about OpFeek and the vinyl work I was producing in collaboration with Shane Kennedy, Jason Coulston, who at that time was co-owner of Pop Cling. We were creating beautiful vinyl wall pieces and using them as substrates for optical feedback performances and installations. Shane realized the form as we deployed it, in response to a specific 4D proposition. OpFeek was first deployed in-gallery at AFHGC, but Shane was doing some fantastic stuff projection-bombing around LA (e.g., on the Gehry Music Center facade at night). At CONTENT Y|G, this experimental seam was only cited in a small vinyl installed near the front door and desk of the gallery. At the behest of Tim and Bryson, we did present an OpFeek at LA Art Show in 2007, where the Y|G introduced my work in its booth. The presentation garnered interest from a spectrum of art fair attendees, including the venerable pop icon William Shatner (“Captain Kirk” of Star Trek fame).

5-17 [Surveillance Camera, OpFeek, Apple II Monitor and Pixel Painting Wall Elements] installation at AFH Gallery Chinatown by Shane Kennedy and Paul McLean (2007)

Shane and I were also conducting experiments using wall elements, surveillance equipment, OpFeek and an Apple II monitor, the first of which took place on 5-17/2007 at AFH Gallery Chinatown. The surveillance cam and Apple monitor were installed incorporated at CONTENT Y|G, minus the OpFeek component. The wall elements part was played primarily by “America” at the Y|G expo, and attendees provided the moving, interactive bodies. Other facets of the show at Yarger|Strauss: 13” x 19” portfolios of Pattern series and additional printed matter spanning my output from 2001-2008; Nashville series prints suspended on custom magnet/wire/steel presentation systems; animations and enhanced/manipulated videos projected on a screen, a wall, and presented on laptops and monitors in the space; new audio compositions by Max Abrams and myself. I designed and produced the identity materials for CONTENT (adhesive title blocks, invitations, poster, etc.), as well as a fairly extensive booklet and catalog accompanying the show. I also published a large volume of propaganda and documentation on the AFH platform, chronicling and expanding on the production and exhibition, plus the aesthetics underpinning them both. The gallery suggested that its website serve as the primary virtual entry point for CONTENT Y|G, and I deferred to them. Bryson had recently overhauled their web presence, and the Y|G site was very well done. Plus, it was a major buzz for me to be listed with artists like Picasso, Miro, Warhol and Chagall.

2 Women; Nashville series/portfolio, for CONTENT Y|G [19” x 13” Epson print on archival paper, unframed (2008)]

I approached the curatorial phase with Bryson and Tim wherever possible collaboratively. The exchange was almost entirely smooth and friendly. The stakes for us all were very high, and as outlined above, the environment for the show was chaotic, to say the least. Rarely did the tension caused by externalities affect our relationship. We did the best we could, and I think we did a great job under the circumstances! In the aftermath of CONTENT Y|G I can point to some things that didn’t happen that would have benefited the undertaking. For instance, we all tried hard through our respective networks to get the LA art press to review the show, but, for various reasons, that did not happen. In the postscript phase of the exhibition, Yarger|Strauss decoupled, and the gallery reverted to Timothy Yarger Fine Art. I finished my studies at CGU, applied for and was accepted to the European Graduate School media philosophy doctoral program, and subsequently moved to Bushwick. My experience with CONTENT Y|G (and the Crash) almost certainly contributed to my decision to join Occupy Wall Street and co-organize Occupy with Art several years later in the Fall of 2011.

Invitation to CONTENT at Yarger|Strauss (by PJM, 2008)

Happenings at Clatsop Community College [October 2018]

PART ONE

Painting by Joe Adams

I met accomplished NWC artist Joe Adams through mutual friends earlier this week, and he invited me to attend a presentation by Maori ceramicist collective Nga Kaihanga Uku at the Clatsop Community College on Thursday, October 18. The event was super, an all-afternoon affair, facilitated by Astoria ceramicist/CCC instructor Richard Rowland, who introduced the program. The Maoris shared slideshows consisting of photo, video and audio documentation of their homes, processes, finished work, exhibitions, and influences. The format was cultural and personal exchange, toggling from the academic routine to intensely personal descriptions of the artists relationships to colonial New Zealand history, indigenous life, the land, the media they used, and the internal methods by which these and other things (like family, gender, etc.) impacted their art.

Nga Kaihanga Uku (Photo by Joe Adams)

The Astoria/CCC-Maori/Nga Kaihanga Uku connection was established through programs in 2012 and 2015. It was clear that the ties between the are strengthening, becoming richer, more productive and generative, with each iteration. Joe had helped out with the production/firing of the clay created in the workshops, had friends among both crews, and made it very easy to meet the participants. I had a rollicking good chat with Wi Taepa. Turns out he spent time in the mid-90s in Santa, showed at Glenn Green Galleries, knew the folks at Shidoni, and ran in some of the same circles I did.

PJM + Wi Taepa (Photo: Joe Adams)

I was very inspired and impressed: I want to learn ceramics [!] LoL; travel to New Zealand; and jump into the CCC offerings. Tonight, Joe and I will attend the painting exhibit of Justyna Kisielewicz, “America Is a Great Place to Live.” The photo set below contains some installation shots of that show, images of the Maori collective program and a few environmental pictures of the CCC facility.

PART TWO

Justyna Kisielewicz [Photo: Joe Adams]

The next evening (October 18), Joe returned to Astoria and picked us up, and we drove up to CCC's Royal Nebeker Art Gallery for Justyna Kisielewicz Artist's reception for "America is a Great Place to Live." The event was well-attended by students, faculty and local artsies.

CCC painting instructor Kristin Shauck, Justyna and (I think) CCC students [Photo: Joe Adams]

Justyna gave a very brief art talk, but the Q & A was memorable. Answering many questions from those in attendance, Justyna was refreshingly direct and energetic in her informative responses. The title of the show is not ironic. A Polish immigrant, Kisielewicz described her artistic evolution in context of the political, academic and economic circumstances she has experienced in her home country and here in the USA. She acknowledged that her transnational perspective is open to expansion, as a result of, for instance, forays into nature & outside the stereotypes (produced via TV, memes, and so on), which used to color her ideas about America, to an extent. She spoke a lot about her craft, artist processes and training. I have been to many such presentations, by artists of every description, and Justyna's stands out as one of my all-time faves, due to the inspirational message and sincerity.

Joe, Shane and I had fun mugging for each others’ photos:

Yes, we know it’s bad form to make faces in photos at art parties. No disrespect to the nice, serious people in this picture.

[Note: Sorry bout the washed-out/too dark extremes in these pics; my phone cam did its best & P-shop can only do so much. Joe’s pics turned out much better! If you’d like to see better representations of Justyna’s excellent paintings, check out her Instagram and Facebook pages, or her website.]