Moving West Part Three

Today is Friday, July 22nd, and Amertah and I are well into our cross country journey. Before we headed west, we spent a few days in Kingston NY and a night in Poughkeepsie with our old friends Josh and Elizabeth. They have the awesomely daughter who has become a fully formed human maniac since we last saw them. She looks something like this…

Back in Kingston, we had another great reading by Dirothy Albertini, this time at Green Kill Art Space. This is a really cool new space for any type of project you can conjure in an old butcher shop on Greenkill ave. in Kingston. If you’re in the area, check out this space and meet David, the proprietor. He is looking for good projects and running the space as a truly open use establishment. Basically, if you’ve got a show idea, a play, a book, an installation, the space is there for you to make it real.

We spent the rest of the weekend hanging with my brother, Jonah, and Dorothy. This included an amazing impromptu cookout with more old friends featuring octopus balls.

Finally, we began our westward trip, which has, so far taken us to an amazing little campground on the Ohio river, where coal barges travel back and forth to coal fired power plants… pretty awesome place. That’s West Virginia over there.

Next, we rolled on to St Louis, where we did the tourist thing and visited the arch after staring at the river for a while. The arch is pretty awesome. In particular, the elevator system is amazing. These little pods rotate as you ascend so you stay vertical.

That night, as the storm you can see brewing over the arch rolled in, and the temperature reached around 100 degrees, we treated ourselves to a hotel. A good choice as the storm was pretty intense that night.

The next morning we stopped briefly in Kansas City at this park…

But, as the temperature continued to rise to about the feeling of standing inside of a furnace, our air conditioner decided to stop working, so my brain started melting and we drove on to find an auto parts store. Luckily, I was able to fix the problem in Topeka Kansas and prevent us from having simultaneous breakdowns in the car due to heat and close quarters.

That night we stayed at a fantastic little campground on a reservoir in the middle of Kansas, called Wilson State Park. I think I love Kansas. It’s an amazing landscape.

This was a great stay, although a rough sleep due to the serious heat, but all in all an awesome place.

Then one more day of Kansas… it’s a big state… and on to Colorado…

 

The next stop is Boulder, where we will spend a few days with Amertah’s Brother Marcus and his girlfriend, Annie. Today, we visit the garden of the gods.

Moving west part ✌️

Yesterday we stopped in Troy, Ny, at the newly relocated Publication Studio Hudson, where Dorothy Albertini did a short reading from her new book, with illustrations by Dennis Ryan, that I published through my imprint, Publication Studio Downeast Editions. Patrick Kiley, of PS Hudson was kind enough to host us for the reading and we had a great turnout on a nasty humid night in the Hudson Valley. 

Now we are in Kingston, where we will have a second reading on Saturday, the 16 (my birthday) at Green Kill art space, from 3-4. These readings are super fun so come out and see one if you’re around. 

Moving West

So here we go moving back to San Diego from Maine, a place that we love dearly, to start a new job and life. The first day didn’t go quite as planned. The movers took about twice as long as expected so we left for Massacgusetts around 7 and arrived in the middle of the night. The next day though, we woke up at my aunt Karen and uncle Steve’s in Adams Mass, visited my grandmother, and went to Mass Moca to see the fantastic Alex Da Corte show and the Sol Lewitt wall work. Then on to Amertah’s dad’s in Nyskayuna NY. Next stop, Hudson Valley for a book reading by my sister in law Dorothy, and hangouts with old friends and my brother. 

Back at Haystack

Well, this June, I was able to cross off a major life goal from my bucket list (I hate the phrase “bucket list” but there you have it) by teaching my first full session course at the Haystack Mountain School of Craft. 

I first attended Haystack as a work Study student in 2007, an experience that was directly responsible for me applying to graduate school and formative to me in many ways. Since then, Haystack has served as a yearly (sometimes a few times a year in one capacity or another) reset. While I have taught short workshops there over the years, this was my first time as a two week course instructor and it did not disappoint. The class, entitled “Reinterpreting the Familiar Object” was loose in theme with sporadic intensive demonstrations and one on one training and discussion. A small group, my Seven student class consisted of a fantastic mix of people from a broad spectrum of life. 

I teach best in these kinds of settings. A class in which students propose their own ideas, and I guide them through the execution of that idea. We had furniture, turning, sculptural boat forms, and much more. So much fun and such a great group. 

Here is a smattering of images from the class. 

Also, we were there for an amazing full moon on the summer solstice. It was positively glowing for most of the two week session. 

Stay tuned for more updates as I prepare to leave Maine for California and a whole new grownup teaching adventure. 

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Back to the Wild West: Big Things Are Afoot

It seems that this blog, which started as a log of my everyday thought process, has increasingly replaced regular process and “what’s new” content, with sporadic major announcements. Today, I want to share with you all a big one…

 

After 5 years living and working in Portland Maine and at the Maine College of Art, a brief spell teaching in New Bedford Mass, a semester in residence at UW Madison, and a whole lot of fun times back in the Northeast, it’s time to move along and begin a new journey.

Teachening update

This past week, I taught a week-long workshop for MECA’s continuing studies program. The class was made up of six students, from high school age and up. The only thing this group had in common was their lack of experience with furniture making techniques and woodworking on a finer level. The class, which

BOOOOOOOKS

I want to fill you all in on a little project that I’ve been working on for some time now as a small side project, but is becoming more of a focus of mine right now and moving forward. In 2012, I became co-director, along with friend and Colleague, Daniel Fuller (now curator at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center), of the Portland Maine branch of Publication Studio.

Back From the Frozen Midwest, Into the Frozen Northeast

my parent’s house in Warren Maine, from my recently acquired drone.

Hello all, and welcome back to SnarkAttack. I haven’t posted much of late because things have been a whirlwind since about midway through my four month stint in Madison Wisconsin as Windgate Artist in Residence in the Furniture Program there. A lot has happened.

At Long Last, a ‘Flat Rate Exchange’ Exhibition!

Madison Windgate Fellowship Residency: Week 3

Madison is on an Isthmus, and that’s where we are. Between two lakes.

Madison Windgate Fellowship Residency: Week 2

With the first week of settling in and getting situated behind me, I’ve started spending more time in the studio. Classes have started and there are students around working and making things, and this is always a helpful motivator. I’m trying to make sure I don’t jump too quickly into a project, but have started by doing some fun drawings in the studio on this great big drawing board that is mounted to the wall in there. you can see it on the right in this picture…

Madison Windgate fellowship residency: week 1

Hi Everyone. I have just finished my first week in Madison for my Windgate fellowship residency. I will be blogging weekly while I’m here, and this is the first of those posts. First of all, I always like to start with a good picture, so here is this…

3 Things

Since I apparently can’t post with any real consistency any more, post-worthy topic tend to pile up for me. So, in order to bring us up to date, today you will learn about 3 big things, in chronological order, all of which are awesome for me.

But first, This hospital pain chart from the Blue Hill Hospital…

Staying Put

For the last week I’ve been installing work for my show Staying Put, at Space Gallery here in Portland

Starting off a busy summer: Lanesboro, MN residency

Just a teaser

Here is one of many sketches (the rest digital) of a large scale public art proposal I just turned in. This is one part of it. A reverse weathervane telling you which direction the wind is moving in.

Summer fun! come join me

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to do a little self promotion here and try to drum up interest in a class I am teaching at Anderson Ranch this summer. It’s called “Chairish”… get it?!

here is the info. Pass this around to anyone who might be interested. I’d love to get a nice big group for this fun short course. click below…

CHAIRISH

here is the course info…

“A Small Craft”

Here is a little timelapse video of me, with the help of Amertah Perman and BA Harrington, de-installing my recent show at IUP’s Kipp Gallery…

pOSTINg

Shows and Things

Oh, Hello: what just happened?

Where am I

Some new news

A chair I recently finished called “Stand Chair”

shameless promotions

Just a short post to tell you all to check out this project my friend Jordan Gehman and I have been up to. It’s a lot of fun to collaborate like this from across the country and it’s helping keep the ideas flowing in a kind of dry time.

It’s called Flat Rate Exchange

You will have to go to the site to learn more. read the “about the project” section and then check out what we’ve done so far.

Here is the link, so go and follow our blog and progress… Flat Rate Exchange

Small Craft (makeshift): some new work and what’s happening

Standing next to things!

Well, remember when I posted This? That was clearly a lie. I tried, but I just can’t find the time to update as regularly as I would like. This is of course a catch-22 because the more I have to write about, the less time I have to write about it.

setting sail for the great rocky north

Greetings on this day of the first great presidential pageant of this election season, from Portland Maine, where I recently saw both this…

The lovely wreck of a ship at Higgins Beach

and This…