the real deal

george sees it the other way, he also thinks "all good art is about process"

He convinced me it is true!

very very big 90x60

BIG IS BETTER!!!!!
swamp dump fungus
Bulldozer.midday.high summer
Fractured. Fragmented. Fucked
sailing on a cardboard sea

hello banana paper! I love you!

cavity gravitas

I have been combining the weaker pieces into fewer stronger pieces. it is amazing to realize in the deconstruction that what you are doing is creating more to construct. Maybe its not Amazing really but it seems that every move I make I generate more to work with. These pieces are held together with a cut tack grid. It looks quilted in this bad photo.
this is a canvas I cut off it's stretcher, something about the crisp straight edge was driving me crazy. It was all wheat-pasted but I ripped it all off, well almost all and I am preparing the surface to receive more layers but I think I breathed when I painted on the gesso and so may just leave it as is
This is one of the piles in my studio. Deconstructed
today was an incredibly productive day in the studio....for the past week or so I have been dilly-dallying. thinking mostly about what moves to make to bring this work to a close and prepare for the residency. I have been thinking intently on how I would like to present this work. I feel that last res my work was misinterpreted simply by the way I had chosen to present it. I am a stylist by profession and so I am inclined to STYLE and install.....I see it all as one. 98% of the work I have completed for this res is on paper. I'm not sure my idea is going to work and so am hesitant to give it a go. Plus I just finished my 5th piece of homemade pizza and I still want more.

the stenciled number may not be the right move for this one. I just love spray paint and stencils. we'll see, I don't think it will last or at least not be quite so noticeable.

sliver rivers and internal logic

The canting voices on this particular story will fade, but they will be going strong on other subjects. We live in a time when people feel pressured to make sententious, pompous and completely false statements about the arts. Art does not have an inherent social or political responsibility. Today with the arts funding slashed there are even more temptations than usual to pretend otherwise- to insist that art can save derelict urban areas, that it can heal the sick and make flowers grow. But the very language that claims to defend art can smother it's wild nature. A work of art, if it is any good, is enigmatic, remote and takes centuries to understand.

In the 1930's a combination of economic misery and political crisis forced artists out of their studios and into the world of public argument-the world of cant. European modern art never really recovered from the dogmas and functionalism of that low dishonest decade. Bob Dylan grew up in a folk movement rooted in the 30's, but he saw that politics was not life-whereas art IS life, and life only. He is an example to emulate: a poet, not a politician, who acknowledges no duty except to making great art. I don't think his critics will change that!

so, someone asked JP, is it a record of performance in the studio? Yes, partly. And then I just had to have this on record "a collector of mine caught her husband staring at one of my paintings......when she asked him what he was doing he said he was trying to read Jose's painting and the more he tried to read it, the more he saw his own story inside the painting. When you look at a Cy Twombly painting and you get just a fragment of the sentence, just one word, but that one word leads you into your own (story): the red color, the bright yellows, touchstones in the painting. I think that is what is happening in these works, which can only be read by me. It's like a diary that you lock. It's private"people need to leave a mark, people write messages that are political, messages about love; people tear shit down and put stuff up.Internal logic resides in the traces



Oh ...my seaweed is almost ready
something about these two just sends me....the cardboard,

the neon enamel paint, the breath compared to the piles I've made....

I just don't know what to do now. BREATHE....
smaller and smaller I go...I think now in reverse. These are very cool piles of unpacked paintings. many layers of homemade detritus...some book pages have found there way in. I am taking a breath for a moment to catch my bearings. I think one more large sheet before the June residency. One or two more trips to NYC prior to res as well. Have any of the questions been answered? I got the book Kamrooz recommended called Abstraction/New Perspectives in Painting.........

let me know when YOU think I am going crazy!

sailing on a cardboard sea

fragment

rivers run through it

rivers run through it
move her.....
of human.........
see the boat? heading south!!!!!!
most of these are tiny as the remains are more like chips than maps......oh the maps!

particular beauty

Anselm Keifer blows me away almost every time.

I heard him speak recently and someone asked if he was scared....

he said no,

he wasn't scared, he was terrified.

Raymond Hains was a french artist part of the Noveau Realisme' I think I may be channeling this group!

of course mark bradford is included here! I have loved him from the start!
as I prepare for my next paper I have come across some particular beauties from my posse'

blue blue indigo

blue does not read the same here.....It really is intoxicating in person. you will see what I mean. I did this last night after some most excellent homemade ravioli and wine ever!! I fell asleep in front of it and woke up in love. it's pretty big....

.hello jooyoung!

I will show you my seaweed next time
blue tape and garden verses....this will all be pulled off once I pick up the ink.
Roots and music OR music roots?
a reflection in a vernal pool in the woods across from my house. I have imagined this, but I know it exists. The snow is nearly gone completely and the earth does smell like this. If you squint your eyes while you are walking you can't help but catch flashes of sunlight as you make your way through the branches down the path on decay as the last fallen leaves metamorph into earth. We too go there.
walnut ink on paper, on canvas....wow canvas. I've mixed up the best batch of wheat paste I've ever made and now all I want to do is wheat paste! I'n pretty certain this will not stay brown.