Pinkie is a movie star!

Ectoplasmic

Oh boy, back to using the trusty ol' Canon point and shoot.  The splatters of paint and crap across the lens and stuff are the exact reason why I am not using my Nikon today. I am pretty sure the other people in the studio are looking at me funny, because basically I am filling elastic-y things with shaving foam.  I know I sure feel like a psycho.  But then again, my best (weirdest) work was made last year when I was at my most psychotic.  I feel like I should be rubbing my hands together and laughing menacingly while looking around with shifty eyes.  Sinister, really.  

Screen-stills:

Can art be fun?

ART CAN BE FUN.
ART CAN BE FUN.
ART CAN BE FUN.

ART CAN BE FUN.

ART CAN BE FUN.

ART CAN BE FUN.

ART CAN BE FUN.

ART CAN BE FUN.

ART CAN BE FUN.

ART CAN BE FUN.

ART CAN BE FUN.

ART CAN BE FUN.

let me out!

Artist Statement 09.20.11

A pastiche of formal elements including materials, process and gesture are the central facets to which my painting practice is tethered, and my obsessive-compulsive mind will never be able to shake these intrinsically engrained tendencies, nor will it relinquish the need to simply ‘make things’.  This being said, sometimes the formal components of a work do not necessarily benefit or support a conceptual or thematic premise, and a result, my practice has shifted into a territory that is process-based, with a finished product that is primarily of digital medium (video projection and extreme-detail photography).  For me, the notion of the moving image is just a natural, time-based extension of the static image, and both have an equally weighted place within my perpetually painterly heart.  I am interested in visual representations of temporality rendered through corporeality (or maybe it’s the other way around.)  Basically, I have become fixated on the idea of the abject and otherworldly as viewed through the lens of (human) bodily association or reference.  I prefer to focus on what is not shown, or what is ambiguous or abstracted to the extent in which the mind picks up where the eye leaves off, and is challenged to consider the filthy possibilities of the bizarre thing writhing before it.  The notion of surfaces have been a recurrent theme within my practice, as the surface remains the threshold between what is seen and what is not seen, and is the site of origin for visceral tension and the precipice for potential energy.  The materials that I utilize include a laundry-list of common products, although an equally important objective within my practice involves the repurposing and filming/photographing of said materials from abstract perspectives, which facilitate the transcendence of their cultural relevance in the finished piece.  For example, a drinking straw, some dollar store bubble mix, and latex house paint are no longer confined within their socially acknowledged semiotic categories, but instead have become a shape-shifting, amphibious creature asphyxiating and sputtering its’ way into the light.

squeaky clean

Vitrine

I've realized something: the way that I construct a video or photo is ultimately the same process by which I construct a painting: materials and gestures.  That's probably important to remember. Okay, now back to baking peanut butter cookies- it's slightly disconcerting that only a few mere hours ago I was smearing vaseline and paraffin wax and oil and mud and now I'm rolling up little balls of peanut buttery delight.  Ah well, the oven will kill any remaining germs, right?

09.15.11

PUDDLES!

Yes! As a kid I totally loved this show! And why wouldn't I? It involves a girl who has been drenched in toxic waste and given superpowers! Superpowers that include morphing into a shiny puddle of liquid mercury or something! It all makes sense now! Thanks to childhood programming that subconsciously informs the aesthetic tendencies of the adult psyche! This is probably the reason that I am fixated on shiny puddles and stuff.

09.12.11 : film stills

Surfaces and sublime slime

A productive sunday and an overall good day- here are a few experimental detail stills.

Must. Keep. Momentum. 

 Nikon D5100 is the best thing of my whole entire life.

Jungle Cat

This is one last remnant of summer, another animal friend- Jungle Cat! I painted him while on vacation in Vancouver Island.  I wish I were still there.  Anyways, I think deep down I have the potential for a successful career as a folk artist selling hand-painted plywood tchotchkies and decorative beadwork and handmade candles or something.  I could sequester myself right outside of Coombs market! Oh I like this idea already.  Anyways, I am back in the studio now, and maybe there will be some "real" new work to come, one of these days soon.

Oh, Jungle Cat, you vicious predator. Plus, look how poisonous you are! If you were a plant or a reptile, you would be just plum-deadly.  But you're not.  You're a Jungle Cat, therefore you are even more deadly.

Chauncey

This is a very special pig named Chauncey.  Chauncey is the inspiration behind at least two songs, and this embroidery/painting.  As you can see, Chauncey is protected by a primary bubble-force field, and yet again by a secondary galactic-glitter force field.  Chauncey's name was accidentally inspired by that of John C. Reilly.  Chauncey, John C.  Get it? Anyways.  

This is the last of my truly ambitious summer-work.  Now I'm back at school, and we don't get our studio spaces until next WEDNESDAY.  So in the meantime, I don't plan on working much, just watching Jersey Shore reruns, and organizing the bazillions of photo files on my mac.

Okay bye.

Chauncey trying to be skinny