general

Hanging on the wall of the museum: a crudely drawn asterisk covering almost the entirety of a small piece of wood.
The curator stood next to it expectantly, eyes gleaming. "Well?" she said.
"You mean, what is the reference?" asked the museum visitor. "A reproduction of the first star drawn by the young Jackson Pollock, in kindergarten? The pictographic anus drawn by Kurt Vonnegut in Breakfast of Champions to commemorate his turning fifty?"
The curator got that look she got when "revealing" a piece of contemporary art to a plebe, trying not to appear condescending that the visitor didn't "get" what only she could have possibly known. This is what she lived for.
"No, none of those, but good guesses," she said. "In fact, it's a reproduction of the edit lines which cancelled page II-81 in the original manuscript of 'Lamia' by John Keats. The media are pine and India ink."
"Oh, my God. Well, it's very important that I be able to visualize that, it puts me more in touch with the barbaric nature of censorship. Thanks."
Completely missing the visitor's irony, the curator said, "I'm so glad you like it, I think it's an important piece. Don't you want to know what was canceled on that page of Keats' text?"
"Not really, no," said the visitor.

(jpeg of actual pretentious artwork seen on vvork)

A show I will have some GIF animation work in, this Friday:

And/Or Gallery and The House of Dang Celebrate the Last Dance

This is it, Seniors. The last dance.

A final music installation and dance party to celebrate And/Or Gallery's move to NYC (Fall 2009), The House of Dang's relocation to a design studio in Oakcliff and their new clothing line to open with Launch, at the Galleria (Fall 2009).

In the gallery during this party, we're creating a replica of a rave, which you may notice is not dissimilar from shows we've put on before except for the volume. Video content will be provided by our artists: Kevin Bewersdorf, Paul Slocum, Guthrie Lonergan, Tom Moody, Marcin Ramocki, Kristin Lucas, Michael Bell-Smith, and Travis Hallenbeck. The music will be a mixture of house and rave-appropriate techno, selected by Paul Slocum. The playlist will include remixes and new material by Tree Wave. It's the LAST DANCE!

When: Friday July 24th from 7pm - til
Where: And/Or Gallery
4221 Bryan St. Suite B
Dallas, TX 75204

My show at And/Or with Saskia Jorda was the gallery's first exhibition, back in '06, and I'm proud to be involved with this closing event. Looking forward to artist and gallery director Paul Slocum's move to NY!

This won't stay up long but I wanted some of my friends to see one of my more abstract GIFs "in the wild," so to speak. These have been showing up a lot lately. The word balloon "Cool moving thing" made my day.

I tried to rebuild one of the World Trade Center towers.* All the material to make an outer shell had been salvaged and was sitting in a large stack. A woman I know from the art world was in charge of the rebuilding; her father built the original and I kept hearing how stern, demanding, and scary he was. I started laying out the planks on the floor and cementing them together. They had to go down in a particular order and I removed quite a few planks from the stack before realizing I'd messed up the order. Somehow I had it in my mind that this was the floor covering and I was assembling the odd-sized rectangular planks like a jigsaw puzzle. My female acquaintance came in, saw what I had done and said, "This material is for the walls, not the floor, the floor will be polished black marble. My dad is going to be so mad, pull these up, hurry!" Fortunately the cement between planks hadn't completely dried, so I was able to pry up all the planks. I put them back on the stack, hoping no one would notice the order was messed up.

*This isn't as narcissistic as it sounds. I see the WTC construction site regularly from the subway that goes into the pit.

"I just finished this piece." "Roy Lichtenstein, right?"

"Why do you say that?" "Well, it looks just like Roy Lichtenstein's work. I'm not sure I could name the painting but it's totally his style."

"Are you saying he owns painted romance cartoons done in enlarged Ben Day dots?" "Kinda, yeah, unless you have some theory for making this, pardon me, clone."

"Wouldn't you say 'ownership' is the language of the marketplace? Can't anyone make an image like this? Why can't you concentrate on the differences between what I made and what Lichtenstein supposedly made? You're immediately dissing this. Shouldn't a critic's job be to be supportive and nurturing? Are you trying to wish me out of existence?"

"Well? Respond to my work, I made it!" "Your piece sucks and you are boring the shit out of me with your rhetoric."