Steven LaRose, Love Battery, 2008
Oil and acrylic on wood panel, 48 x 32"

Fuuuuug. . . Inspiration is Saul Williams

Saul performing Ohm.

Setting the record straight. . .

. . . wait a minute, records are round! Oh well.

I've always been a couple of years behind Dennis. The logic of his early 90's image below,

allowed/compelled me to make this 1994 painting called Over-wrought: Polyurethane and Acrylic on Wood
48" x 48"

R&D

creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications

Test Pilot

Blecknered, 2005-08
paint on quarter inch luan
12 inch square

This is a tinted Varathane Diamond Polyurethane Interior Water Based layer that has dried for roughly a year. Then the bursts were made with Holbein Duo Aqua Water Soluble Oils and also allowed to dry for a year. Tonight, I topped everything off with an elegant glaze of pure Damar Varnish. I'm wondering how everything is going to stick together. So far, so good.

That Varathane red makes my new paintings look like construction paper. I might have to revisit some of my old routine. Think of it as a reunion tour. . .

Face Plant

In Dennis Hollingworth's recent post, he says: "Certainly two big dabs in the center midline of the picture plane is plenty to hang a face on." Scott McCloud would say that it takes even less.

In house Scott label.
In house Dennis label.

Marvel, all the way down.

The other day I posted a video of me goofing around a 1995 painting called Tortoises All The Way Down. A few days later, I alluded to my current task of weeding through my flat files. In the file was a blurb from a 1957 issue of TV Guide about an episode of Disneyland which aired on December 4th of that year called Mars and Beyond. I easily found the show parceled out into six segments on YouTube. Imagine my serendipitous glee when only four minutes into the first segment I was confronted with this image: The animation is beautiful. The ideas fantastic. Imagine, Sputnik had only months before gone into space. I was grabbing screen shots right and left:
The movie was made six years before I was born. It would be another year still before Mariner 4 would take the first close-up pictures of Mars in 1964. I enjoy processing these early influences on my taste and dreams. As I was arranging the screen shots above in Photoshop, I was listening to Slacker Radio with the settings adjusted so that it would play songs unfamiliar to me. A song came on that was obviously by The Fall which I had never heard before. Imagine my tripled serendipitous glee when ironically or poetically, the song was titled "Disney's Dream Debased":

Crazy Weather We're Having

Saturday:

Sunday:

Duet

I've started two collaborations recently. One is with Anthony Castro, and the other is with Timothy Buckwalter. Timothy has a flickr set growing with our back-and-forth. These are jam sessions without extensive preparation or predefined arrangements.

"Jam sessions are often used to develop new material, find suitable arrangements, or simply as a social gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be loosely based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one participant, or may be wholly improvisational. Jam sessions can range from very loose gatherings of amateurs to sophisticated improvised recording sessions intended to be edited and released to the public." (from Wikipedia)

The Throb of Existence

Once upon a time,
I was allowed to dig through a dead person's files.

I snatched up all the Bank of America advertisements I came across.
Flipping them over,
I only found one date: 1957.

I have an affinity for the sponge.
I made the circles in black.
The travel advertisements I would love to be able to credit.
I fancy myself a professional sponger.
(It is a trade I learned from theatrical set painting).

I wonder who this illustrator was/is?
These happy accidents are under control.

My Seven Year Old Demi-Vegetarian Daughter Dissects A Cow's Eye And Documents The Day With Her Diminutive Camera

Dennis, Tennis, and Brodo, or Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh.

Three men that have profoundly (and personally) influenced me will be exhibiting their work on the same days. I should have respectively hyped their openings. I blame this painting for sucking my blogger powers. Tomorrow, Dennis will have a free-for-all at the Michael Kohn Gallery:

Currently, Whiting Tennis has a solo show at the Derek Eller Gallery.

Daniel Brodo is in a group show that is half way over at the Center for the Arts in Eagle Rock.
I say "holy shit" in the best possible way.

If I am not what I know but who I know, then I am very proud of myself.

"Myself" being the humanity that is my network.