I can't believe these are all me!

I was going through my computer's photo booth album and this is what I found. I feel like I look like a different person in each picture.

It's Nice to Meet You! in action

pictures from the opening in Portland

Peter took these at the Milepost 5 opening. All I have to say is that my friends are the best. The BEST! Yes!

text message from maggie

My inflatable self got to hang out with friends in Portland last night. So perfect!

artist auditions

This is actually something that took place a while back when I was in Portland, but I just found their website while I was google searching my own name. Basically, artists that were interested in participating had to do all this crazy stuff... show up in weird places at weird times and complete really random assignments. Eventually they narrowed it down and eliminated people, and chose just a few artists to showcase in the final exhibition. But the process was really fun. This is something  I made when I was involved... it's a pop-up with a monkey and Hulk Hogan that are the same size (they gave us a square white piece of posterboard and we had 24 hours to make something with it, and I found both of these pictures in the current issue of National Geographic magazine).

artist statement

I submitted this statement today for the ISC student award competition and am pretty happy with it. I'd love some critical feedback....

The ordinary objects, spaces, people and places I encounter in my everyday life provide much of the inspiration for my work. I strive to signify and dispute the supposed monotony and disposability of daily life by focusing on what is conventionally considered mundane. When taken out of context and viewed from a new perspective, what is normally commonplace has the potential to become novel and extraordinary and, most importantly, memorable.

My own habits, routines, social interactions and possessions are often used as a platform for these investigations. Consequently, much of my work tends to take the form of self-portraiture. Although I am the subject and my experience is completely subjective, my intention is not to focus solely on myself. I wish to be seen as a surrogate for the universal experience of day-to-day life.

I'ts Nice to Meet You! is an interactive inflatable self-portrait that emphasizes our inherent desire for social interaction. It could visually be described as a wacky-waving-arm-flailing-inflatable-tube-person, much like the ones seen advertising grand openings or at car dealerships along the side of the road. The sculpture was commissioned and made by an inflatable images advertising company, and its height and physical proportions - such as the chest, waist and hip measurements - match those of my own figure. The caricature of my face was drawn from a digital picture that I emailed to another artist I found through a Google search on the internet. The figure is activated and inflated by motion detectors that turn the fan and blowers on when they sense the presence of another person. It then deflates after 30 seconds, or the approximate time it would take for a viewer to lose interest and walk away.

opening in Portland

My inflatable self portrait is making its debut in an opening at Milepost 5 in Portland tomorrow night. My friend Gary Wiseman (co-founder with me of Kitchen Sink PDX) curated the show. Here is a little more info about the exhibition, appropriately titled Self Projections, as seen on the art blog portlandart.net.

And here is the Milepost 5 website.

quote of the day

"Nobody's ever died from change."

I discovered the reason for my obsession with self-portraiture!

"The more we immerse ourselves in ourselves, the more open we become, since the closer we get to the germ of our totality the closer we are to the germ of totality of all men."

-Piero Manzoni, For the Discovery of a Zone of Images, 1957

send a message

I found this website where you can pay a Palestinian to spraypaint your message on the West Bank Wall.

They take 3 pictures of their graffiti and email them to you, but can't guarantee how long the message will last. I have been wondering what I would say ever since I found this. Ironically, I think most of the messages people paid for are to loved ones (I found the link on a website that was giving "great Valentine's Day gift ideas"), like "Jakob loves Julie 4eva", etc. 

But this whole thing just makes me wonder... what do I have to say? Especially to a people/place in such a situation? 

*** UPDATE***

I am still thinking about this. Lately, my favorite idea is to quote people from my everyday life. Normal people saying normal things that would seem absurd if isolated and taken out of context. My friend Genevieve used to write down the amazing things people would say without noticing what they were really saying. Maybe she still does this. I might start doing it too.

more of me

I am sending my inflatable self portrait It's Nice to Meet You! to Portland for a show that opens on April 18th, and this is the picture I really hope they use for the catalogue. I have been thinking about humor and making sure the viewer knows when something is supposed to be funny vs. ironic. I think this picture of me is really funny. It's the same one I sent to the company who made the inflatable when they needed a picture of me for reference.

video of a video of me in a box

I am working on hooking it up to a battery so it can go on a journey. I think I will start by sending it home to mom and dad, and have them send it to Portland, and from there maybe to New York, then Philly, etc. I want to send it to lots of friends and loved ones that are spread out around the country, and have it eventually come back to me. It will be a long journey home.

owning you

My friend Dallas Kavanagh is working on a really cool project for her thesis show, for which she is "gifting" away parts of her body to friends and loved ones (kind of like real estate). Check out the blog for more information and a better explanation. I "own" site #4 (pictured above)!

exactly what I need right now

I just did a google image search for "exactly what I need right now", and this is what I got:

me in a box

My friend Chris Purcell gave me the best suggestion: to mail it! Yes! Now the question is where to send myself. Hmmm... maybe... home.

better image of Lot's Wife

I am debating whether or not I should fix it. (See the older post about how it self destructed). What do you think? I'm not sure if it is successful and engaging, or if it's something I just had to get out of my system in order to move on to new ideas. I'd like to know (honestly) how other people feel about this thing. Because the broken pieces are taking up space in my studio, so I'd like to either fix it or just trash it and be satisfied with having the documentation.

salt, rigid polyurethane foam, mirror

Sol Lewitt knows what's up

I love this quote from Sol Lewitt's essay in Artforum (1967):

"Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable."

rapid eye movements

Recently I have been obsessed with the way a person's eyes flick back and forth when they are looking out the window of a moving car. It's almost impossible to keep your eyes still... they move side to side so fast because of the way we try to focus on the things that are flying by, even just for a split second. I'm wondering how this relates to change, and the fact that I love moving (moving my home from one city to another).

This video is just an experiment. I need to figure out how to alleviate the bumpiness that goes along with riding in a car. I think I need to strap the camera to my head somehow. And then I need to figure out what I would do with it (one idea is to play the loop on a flat screen that's mounted on the inside of a cardboard moving box, and installing the box in a space on a "dolly" cart).

Intro to Sculpture blog

Here is a link to the blog that I started for the Intro to Sculpture class that I teach with Brett Hunter. Each of the students is creating their own blog to use as their on-line "sketchbook" for class assignments, and all of these will eventually link from this page. I am pretty excited about what may come of this, so we'll see if they use them or not. The assignment was inspired by PSU's Social Practice Program (they each have blogs instead of studio spaces).

my community

The interview I recently did with my landlord has inspired me to do a series of interviews with the people in my community that I rely on. For instance,

my landlord

my doctor

my gynecologist

my mechanic

my hair dresser

my trash collector

my dentist 

my roommate

my neighbor

my boss

my teacher

my cobbler

my veterinarian

my grocer

my tailor

my advisor

my therapist (I don't actually have one of these but am considering getting one. I'm also thinking of getting a lawyer and an acupuncturist. But we'll see.)

I'm not sure yet how the project will work out visually, but I'm thinking of having them "sit" for me (so that I could draw their portraits the old fashioned way).  I would, ideally, like to invite myself over to their house so that I could draw them in their homes and not in the environments in which I am accustomed to interacting with them. I think the project would in a way "attach itself to the history of self portraiture" (in the words of my advisor Ron Lambert), because all of these people are labelled as "mine". Each one of them knows a certain amount of information about me that is not necessarily public knowledge, but at the same time we don't know each other very well. I have yet to figure out why I find so much meaning in this. But I am looking forward to taking these figures out of their contexts.