years end and start again

Shiny name on things: it

As you can see, i finally received my thesis document, bound and published, since my last posting.

underwater exploration: Maine has an ocean?

Alright, I’ll come right out and ask… Did you know that Barnacles have one of the biggest penises of any animal? no? Well, neither did I, but they do. Relatively speaking of course, the ordinary barnacle that attaches itself to the bottoms of boats, piers, docks, and rocks, has a prehensile penis that is several times its overall length. Why, you ask, do they need such comically oversized penises? well, it’s really quite simple, and this informative blog explains it best…

“The penis of the barnacle is considered one of the largest in the entire animal
kingdom, and allows the animal to simply reach over and fertilize its neighbors. To
add to the convenience, all acorn barnacles are hermaphroditic, so each individual
can both conceive and bear young.”

That’s right, not only is their penis to overall body mass grossly out of balance, but it turns out they have lady parts as well, making every barnacle a baby making, and birthing machine.

In case you don’t believe me (and are too lazy to click the aforementioned link), It looks a little something like this…

celebrating protest camping: the new “doing something”

There's a man on the roof

This is the view from the window of my Wednesday and Friday Morning 3d Design class. I have to say, it’s not all that bad. Looking out over the city, and at back cove, I think “this could certainly be worse”. I often look at that rooftop space and think how much I’d like to live in that. Unfortunately it’s abandoned or used for storage. That man is fixing one of its many broken or missing window pains. That would be a great apartment.I love this old architecture. The streets, as you can see are a mess, so I can’t keep up my SoCal rollerblading regiment, but the buildings are just the way I like them.

Enter the Seasons: celebrating the magic of seasonal unpredictability

Before I begin, I want to show you something great. On Friday, I finished a few class periods of critiques with my 3d students of their all-cardboard “Body Extensions” project. There was a lot of great work and I got some good pictures of the students wearing their extensions. Now, I don’t generally want this blog to overlap with my teaching. For the most part, I’d like to draw a line between my classes and this outlet for more miscellaneous observations and discussions. However, here is a video that I can not help but show you, all six or seven of my loyal readership, of a pretty well engineered piece from this critique. enjoy Hannah’s extendable mechanized cardboard arm and hand…

Imagine protesting such and such: a pre-occupation

First of all, I think that maybe I painted to bleak a picture of Portland in yesterday’s post. I just thought I would clarify: I think this a great town. The fact that it is overrun with the noisily insane is by no means a deal-breaker. I live walking distance from my job, which happens to be in a huge old 5 story department store, and i can walk to the ocean in a couple of minutes.

the view from the park down the street

not too bad really. Just wanted to put that out there. There happen to be an inordinate number of walking dead and shouting maniacs, but you get used to it.

Settling in and other things

Maine mornings on our new street

After a couple of months of decompressing (sort of), and processing, I’m starting to settle in to the magic of life in Maine. It’s an interesting adjustment, but

Ketchup: where was I… where am I?

I know, It’s been awhile. I think, instead of explaining myself (You’ll see in a later post why I’ve been Idle in the bloggy sense) I’ll just pick up where I left off: here is an abridged description of my short but lovely journey across the country.

Note: when I say lovely, I mean everything leading up to and including Madison Wisconsin. Because, lets not lie to ourselves, there is nothing good about the drive from there east. It is at this point that the trip becomes a slog. A thankless march through a 20 hour monotony . A bland blur of IllinoisIndianaOhioPensylvania. It’s not really all that bad.

Anyway, you saw the beginning of our trip, but here is some of what we saw and did between San Diego and the swiftly cooling East Coast.

We started out in San Diego and drove out into that magnificent desert.

So Long San Diego and the Great Trip Eastward

thumbs down for leaving town

A lot has changed since the last time I posted here.

boxing, and blocking

a fresh pile of tiny sawhorses

I want to share a recent interaction that I had with you. As some of you know, I am moving across the country in about a month, and I have been actively looking for people who are throwing away large and medium moving boxes.

Summertime is here: making plans

Amertah ariving from Taiwan

Dear Internets,

art in the woods, art in the city

the view from the painting studios at Haystack Mountain School of Craft

So, after a torturous two weeks without reliable internet connection, I have finally emerged from the woods to return to what really matters, Blogging to no-one about the mundane things that I see and do. If you sense a note of sarcasm there (read it again, it’s there) it is because, in fact, two weeks at Haystack Mountain School of craft and a few days at my parents house in Maine is actually the opposite of torturous. it is, in reality, exactly the vacation that I needed.

For those of you that have never attended Haystack, take this as a warning: For your own good, find a way to get there. This was my second time, the first was on a work study scholarship and this time I was assisting a steam bending workshop taught by the fantastic Mitch Ryerson of Boston. a full photo album covering the class can be seen here, but here are a few highlights…

Some kind of things

So it’s come to this: I’m going to lame out and just dump a bunch of pictures of things on you. Starting now…

What not and such: starting them young

showdown: a book on the shelf of the La Jolla Athenaeum

I want to share with you a recent scene that I witnessed while on an outing.

Sketchy Business

I hate to put up a new post and send my Thesis work to the bottom of the page, but its time to move on…

Contrary to popular belief, the weeks following one’s thesis exhibition are anything but calm and relaxing. Granted it is vastly different than the long days at the studio that I have grown accustomed to, but I don’t really feel as though I am in some magical land of relief and relaxation. Honestly, I don’t really think I would like that. who does?

Am I a master yet? well no…

After a brief hiatus, I am finally able to return to the self indulgent world of blogging. My hiatus, as many of you know, was not one of leisure but instead, a brief interlude of hectic insanity known as the MFA thesis exhibition. In hindsight, I would say that the show and the run-up to it went better than I could have hoped.
The show, entitled You Are Here, was presented as a walking tour that started in the Jackson gallery on campus and wound around the fifth floor balcony of the art building in a large loop. The idea was to try to replicate the kinds of mediated interactions with the landscape and space familiar from national parks, historic landmarks, and even shopping malls. here is an image of the map for reference…

Rodeo clown

So, here is a short post since it is the week before my show and yes, I am feeling it.

First off, Last night was Kyleen Jeans’ Thesis exhibition at State and I must say, it was a great show. Kyleen is making great work and her presentation was spot on. Instead of trying to space a bunch of work out in an oversize gallery, she put all of the work in the little back room of the Flor Y Canto and  then blocked the rest of the space off with a blanket made of patterned linens and lit slightly from behind… it worked to great effect.

Thesis haze

So, I know I haven’t posted in a while, but this thesis thing started really taking over my life, as it should, but I only have a week and a half left so that’s exciting. speaking of which, here is the flier for the show, which is entitled You Are Here

and here are the PDFs if you want to download it. You Are Here front
You Are Here back

As I wind up for the final push to the show, I am finding a distinct (and welcome) lack of fear and nervousness. I’m not without some stress and worry but I feel like, at this point, the work will be done and the show will be what it will be. That’s not to say that in the next several days I won’t fall apart, but as of now it looks like it will come together to be a pretty strong, and fun, show. I was having a conversation with my good friend Amelia the other day, who is at the same point in a graduate program in metals at Madison, and we both have come to a similar point in our work regarding our thesis. It seems like you really do become more comfortable with your work and your process and ability to discuss those things as you move along this path. Not that I’m getting cocky, (i still go through periods of intense self doubt… all the time in fact) it’s just an understanding that I am working as much as one can work and at this point, I have a certain sense of comfort with the knowledge that my work is at least getting at something that I am happy with. for whatever that’s worth.

speaking of crazy technology

here is Matt’s new portable scanner in action scanning a little figurine…

for a limited time

First off, it’s been a while since my last post so I will start with the most important matter, as it is time sensitive. The new Panda Bear album is almost out (April 12th) but for now, NPR is streaming it in its entirety. Now, I don’t know about you, but this album has been a hard wait for me. 2007′s Person Pitch LP remains to this day one of my regular cycle albums and the anticipation for a follow up has been killing me (sort of). I’m currently mid listen and am enjoying it. Give it a listen. This album is a little murkier. on NPR they talk about Noah Lennox’s recording process and it was recorded in a basement. I don’t know exactly what that means but it feels a little darker and less spacious. Anyway, I’m excited.

Judgement day comes but two or three times a year

for about a year now, I’ve been riding my bike on the same route to get to my studio and recently this appeared along El Cajon blvd in college area…

that is sooooo soon!

Now, aside from being outraged

making contact

Yesterday, about 3/4 of the way through my bike ride to the studio, I reached out and high-fived a man dressed as a subway sandwich. Now, I don’t normally go out of my way to make physical contact with strangers dressed as giant sandwiches, but I though, that man is no doubt crying inside of that suit as he dances holding a sign for 5 dollar (definitely more than his hourly wage) sandwiches, and the high five being the new, well, high five, he could use a dose of ride by hand smacking. He looked a little something like this, except he was dancing on the curb along busy El Cajon blvd.

I hope that I could have brightened his day just a bit, although I fear that only hard hard drugs could brighten a day that has been spent in such a way. That’s all I’ve got for today. stay tuned for my next post when I reveal the secrets of the hypnotizing sandwich dance.

making space

After spending the day at the studio as per usual today, Amertah and I went to the South Park “Walkabout” for the first time and friends, it was magical. There were people and babies and more people and “Boutiques” and “shoppes” and all sorts of other cleverly named places to spend money. one of the highlights of this outing however, was a flea circus…

Foundry watch.

Suzie home maker

these parts are starting to look familiar

Why is it that no matter what I do, I always end up making tiny houses. I took this picture at about 1:30 this morning in the midst of making a stack of parts for my diving board’s cam mechanism. The parts are intended to be set up something like this…

Its raining raindrops!

Tonight I went in to the Studio at about 11 pm to get a couple of little tasks finished up and it was raining really hard. This was a really beautiful rain so I’m ok with it but the SDSU art building is not. our back porch was about two inches deep at the center and the drain was totally clogged. so, I plunged it out and it made the coolest whirlpool I’ve ever seen. It was dark out and I was cameraless so you’ll have to take my word for it but it was wicked fast and then it started making this really loud suction noise as it drained the water as quickly as it could.
After dealing with that, I went to check on my rocking shed (it looks a little something like this…