2006 Music tidbits

The Black Angels, Passover The First Vietnamese War (mp3).
Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah, In This Home On Ice (mp3)
Arctic Monkeys, I bet you look good on the dance floor (mp3)
Cat Power, The Greatest The Greatest (mp3)
Kelley Stoltz, Below the Branches The Sun Comes Through (mp3)
J Dilla, Donuts Time (mp3)
Thom Yorke, The Eraser Harrowdown Hill (mp3)
TV On the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain Wolf Like Me (mp3)
Graham Coxon, Love Travels at Illegal Speeds Standing on my own again (mp3)
Built To Spill, You in Reverse Car (mp3)
Silversun Pickups, Carnavas Well Thought Out Twinkles (mp3)
The Roots, Game Theory Game Theory (mp3)
Gnarls Barkleey, St. Elsewhere Crazy (mp3)
Ghostface Killah, Fishscale The Champ (mp3)
Archie Bronson Outfit, Derdang Derdang Got to get your eyes (mp3)
Band of Horses, Everything All the Time The Funeral (mp3)
The Mountain Goats, Get Lonely Woke Up New (mp3)
The Decemberists, the Crane Wife Sons and Daughters (mp3)
Belle and Sebastian, We Are Sleepyheads (mp3)
Art Brut, Bang Bang Rock & Roll Nag Nag Nag Nag (mp3)
Comets on Fire, Avatar Dogwood Rust (mp3)
Wolfmother, Wolfmother Dimension (mp3)
Tapes 'n Tapes Omaha (mp3)
Sufjan Stevens, The Avalanche Come on feel the Illinoise (mp3)
Mudhoney, Under a Billion Suns Blindspots (mp3)
Brightblack Morning Light, Brightblack Morning Light Everybody New (mp3)

Many of these mp3's were gathered with the help of the music aggregator elbo.ws so some of the links will be removed in the next week out of respect to the artists. Holy cow, the music kids got our visual art butts kicked.

Stacy, 1998
32" x 40"
Acrylic and Varathane on wood
NFS

details:

argh

One reason that I am a little stressed/disappointed is that I didn't finish Stacy's sewing room in time for Christmas. I should have remembered that one of my weakest talents is estimating time. I have been royally screwed on any number of bids that I have submitted over the years. Presently, I will only work for people who allow the project to be billed for T and M (time and materials). Here is the room's present state looking from the doors: The sky lights are in and those were hard for me because the rafters were all five degrees canted one way making everything a trapezoid. I had to make funky cuts for everything in order for the room to look square on the inside. We have two old mahogany doors that will make closets on the left and right. Refinishing the doors is another project for another time. The space in the middle started as a Murphy bed but we are starting to fantasize it as more storage. I'm hoping we/she opts out on the Murphy bed idea. Now I'm standing where the folding bed won't go (he says with crossed fingers).

My Studio Reflects How I Feel

Alleged criminals that were tested see them spinning around madly;

I received these images from my cousin in one of those long forwarded email strings that must be in everybody's computer by now. They are breathing. I keep thinking about some of my paintings and how hard it is for me not to apply a drop shadow and a highlight.

3 Blogging Hollingsworth's

Dennis

Harold

Neil

Never draw anything you can copy;
never copy anything you can trace;
never trace anything you can cut out and paste in.

Wally Wood

good things

New Untitled Painting 2, 2006
12" x 12"
Oil on acrylic on wood

A holiday light strand inside a new coffee shop in town.
I am seeing paintings everywhere.

Zaida and I went to the new bistro to meet Stacy after her yoga class.
To kill some time, we folded time and space with two cameras.

Speaking of Zaida and painting, the above shot was taken in my studio by my sister over the Thanksgiving holiday. Zaida was counting washers. I am counting my blessings. I started to whine the other day in my comments section. I think that lack of sleep was turning me into something bad. My truck still doesn't start regularly and I'm having trouble mounting a sky light in cold weather as the asphalt shingles are too brittle. But, you know, the dog is behaving better every day and my daughter has good food and is growing up in a pleasant community. So I gently push aside my Art Fair in Miami envy, pour hydrogen peroxide on my scabby and raw hands, and decide to get back to painting.

Miso's big day

Until Miso has her last set of shots next month, we have been doing our best in the back yard.

Flying Nun.
But this week I was at a job where they had two dogs and Miso got to have her first full on play date.
It warmed my heart to see her be so dog like.It was the first time that she was able to get her little engine up to full speed.
Those ears were flappin!

She slept in my truck for three hours while I finished the cabinet job.

Cabinets

Here is a little zoom-in on the cabinets that I painted this week.

I'm not sure why I'm posting these here. I suppose I want to try and find "passion" in how I spend my days. I thought that one step would be to try and not be ashamed of the pain-staking and toxic ditzing that I do. It is really fascinating that I am sometimes doing exactly what the cleaning lady is doing on the other side of the house. She has knee pads on, I have knee pads on. She has her box of rags, exactly like mine. She has potions and agents. We both have keys to the house. We both have to pay attention to arbitrary detail. The only difference that I can see is, she is taking dirt away, and I am putting it on.

The training is working out pretty well

Sit.

Down.

More Filler

Filler

While I'm in a holding pattern, I thought I might throw out there a painting from the 90's back-catalogue:

Lithic Acrylic
24" x 24"
Varathane and acrylic on wood

Some details:

What should Lithic Acrylic be priced at?
	$300
	$400
	$500
	$600
	$700
	$800
	$900
	$1000
	None of the above
pollcode.com free polls

Branches

The painting above is by Stuart Slind from the Agnes Bugera Gallery in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I don't remember how I came to this image. As I was cleaning out my bookmarks I casually clicked on many of the painters represented by this gallery. I was left feeling rather ineffectual. There are so many painters out there. So many painters. You don't even have to be in Miami in order to appreciate this. It bummed me out.
The detail above is a painting that is in a holding pattern until I get un-bummed out. The line quality will become more diaphanous over time, buried under glazes, and brought back to life with a deft flick of the wrist.

I found this indexed page of Fractals, which I must have bookmarked when Chris Rywalt was talking about them in my comments section a while back. Why do they have to use such acidic colors when they run these programs? And why do they eventually fall flat for me? They are fascinating, and seemingly organic, but ultimately logical? Are they intricate one-liners?

A couple of people recommended Galkyd to me a couple of months ago. I just opened my first bottle and was perplexed by the internal pour spout. I'm not sure I pierced the thing properly. It seems like great idea for controlling drips, but mine just falls out when I tip the bottle. But that is the least of my concerns. Check out the halo-like leaching of oil? surrounding my marks! I hate it! This red painting is now on the back-burner to see what comes of the halo over time. As it stands, I ran out and bought a new bottle of Liquin which is working fine.

I bookmarked this ArtInfo interview with Jonathan Levine where I sort of shrugged my shoulders. "People look at this art and say, “That’s illustration, that’s graffiti, that’s comic book art”— and it’s easy to dismiss—but in fact what these artists are doing is using popular imagery as their icons." Yeah, neato, fun even, but still. . . I think I looked at the fractal for longer. I was bummed that "fringe" art didn't seem edgy to me anymore. Fringe isn't pushing the boundaries of Art anymore, it has become a marketable craft. Which is cool, I'm a painter doing some crafty things.

I think I bookmarked this site of Russian Folk Art because it didn't bum me out. Craft rules. I just wish I had some time to be making my own right now.

No Risk, Just Flow

New Untitled Painting
(I don't even know which end is up) (yet)
12" x 12"
Oil on acrylic on wood

Why buy even inexpensive dog beds?

Stream Drop

Before December 20th I am going to try and finish the "carriage house" for my wife. As a present to her, she will have a whole room to herself. I should have taken a "before" picture, especially of the mummified cats from the neighborhood who had made the pilgrimage under the floorboards when they knew that their time was up. It was a wooden structure, sitting on soil. Now it rests on a concrete slab. Because we live in Ashland's Historical Railroad District, we can't do much, if anything to the building. So, I put bandages on the outside, and I am going to do a nice job on the inside. A secret cave (with skylights, hardwood floors, electricity, etc.). What that means for you readers is that the blog has moved down a priority notch for a couple of weeks. It is now below this Chateau Imp, the easing dog supervision, the always annoying day job, the more and more exciting painting, and today, one sick chick (my daughter). You'll have to busy yourself with a bullet list:

• One of the reasons that I stopped calling this blog Fish or Cut Bait was because I became bored with hearing myself champion the "In between". But then the other day, I found myself (virtually) wandering from booth to booth at the 2003 Korean Art Fair. I was equally appalled and inspired.
• I spent many hours in the late 90's tweening away with an early version of Flash. At the time, the interactive nature of the application didn't interest me as much as the program's animation powers. I imagined a not to distant future where cereal boxes would be moving with simple visual loops. Lately however, like most people, I find Flash-heavy sites rather annoying. That is why I was pleased when George pointed me to Cold, Hard Flash, a blog about Flash animation, news and links. Now I can get excited again.
• I'm sort of a materials geek. That is why I found myself lost at the Dazian Fabrics web site. I was pointed there because here in Ashland, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, they buy stuff from Dazian all the time. A woman from the costumes/prop department just showed me this fabric that was resin impregnated and that when heated with a heat gun, would soften and mold to the underlying shape when cooled. It is nothing I could use right now, but these sort of things get logged into the Potential Department of my brain.
• Anyone with a scenic art background has a Potential Department. This is slightly different and often confused with the Materials Junky Stimulus. MJS as it is often called, occurs in many of us in places like the Daniel Smith Warehouse. The symptoms are a glazed excitement mixed with a profound coveting reflex for all art supplies that you don't really need (or even know how to use) but desire. The Potential Department, on the other hand, starts working in places like The Dollar Tree or Home Depot. This is the department that doesn't see what a product is, it just sees shape, texture, scale, material safety, etc.
  
• As far as blogs go, I keep forgetting to mention Jennnifer at simpleposie. She has a determined line of questions going on. And she doesn't stop. I liken it to Chris Ashley's HTML drawings in that he has phenomenally kept it up. I'm sure that they are both addicted. It is interesting that the strength of their respective projects resides predominantly in the big picture, the daily panel by panel animation. Many of the drawings or questions can stand on their own, but the cool thing is the interlocking patterns from day to day or year to year.
• I really wish I had time to jump on the Risk band wagon. Dennis hit a nerve with Bill and Harold by posting some thoughts on abstraction from Kurt Varnedoe. Really great thoughts. I've been having Deborah Fisher's recent blog post about Risk bouncing around as a comparison. It is interesting how "fear" is related to "faith" and "risk" is a consequence of both. I totally understand what Deborah is getting at, in fact I wrote lyrics ". . .reminds me of death, and panics a creativity" (on a song by the Sad and Lonely's called Steve LaRose), but I pine for a less desperate motivation and cherish a faith inspired by possibility like the one Varnedoe speaks of.
  
• A modern symptom of MJS (see the fourth bullet above) is a rush I receive when I see a new application on-line for artists. Chris has come up with a great idea, SlideRoom - Online Portfolio Submissions. "The SlideRoom Application System was conceived in response to the need for an easy way to facilitate portfolio submission and review." I'm itchin' to start using the services. Sign up now!
• As far as music goes, I've been having fun with Pandora, I hope the "bookmarked songs" in the sidebar aren't too annoying. Also, it is great (and hysterical) that Wendy Fonarow picked the Eagles of Death Metal, Death by Sexy as one of her top 10 Best of 2006 in this month's Artforum. "This album is infused with libidinal tension and electricity."
  
• I don't know if you've noticed but I'm posting two books a month in the sidebar and I've just updated that "feature".
  
• Have you ever caught a puppy tooth inside your nostril?