SEEING AT NIGHT

FRIEND ADMITS TO BAD PUBLIC ART

I love getting messages from old friends. moving around in childhood did its damage on me. I have tended to just leave the past and the people that populated it behind like some finite fiction. . . but of course, all this silly facebook activity in the last year and half has stirred up a lot of real people I once knew, who are still having their lives. it's really great.

so, the in-flow of old friends continue. . .the latest communication I received was so bizarre, I just have to share it:

I received a random email from an old high school buddy, who is now living in south texas. . .he filled me in on the pertinent details. . .yes, he's balding, has 4 children, two of which are adopted from china. . .and is an artist, too. it all seemed kind of interesting and my heart was warmed that he thought to write, that he remembered my old artistic pranks. I responded immediately. then found another second email from him with just a single line or two, saying he felt like a sell-out artist. I thought that was odd, but was nice and replied, " well, aren't we all sell-outs, as artists, when the market is so unavoidable. . ."

then he wrote to me again. . .to confess, I guess. I uncovered the real reason he emailed: to say that
he was commissioned to do a statue of Laura bush for a library. (!) he rather enjoyed hanging with the bushes. . .nice people and all. I think he remembered my opinionated nature and was fishing. . .or was he being antagonistic. . .how cruel? he and his friends in high school were masters at a sarcastic brand of humor. . .so I do have to wonder.

here was my response:

" 'I was commissioned by a library to produce a statue of Laura Bush '

. . .wow, it took me a moment to recover from reading that. (I see what you mean about selling out. . .WOW. . .) (are you joking?)

. . .today, my boss at my main freelance gig was distressed to discover her sister going to washington to protest obama with a despicable, ignorant group called "americans for prosperity". . .we looked up the website to find obama being compared to hitler . . . (http://www.americansforprosperity.org/national-site). and not that I'm totally happy with obama, but I'm thinking that's totally unfair. just 6 years ago, an fbi agent would haul you away to a prison camp if you published such a thing about old W. . . .no, I have no sympathy for bush, regardless of how complicated a person he is or was, no matter what a friendly guy he is in person. . .he is a criminal! he lied about war. he cheated in the polls. he was a goddamn cowboy puppet for terrible despots who greedily controlled our country. . .and wrecked it pretty damn good. and, he's going to get away with it. . .I remember days when it seemed as if his regime was not going to end but just get more nightmarish, even the new york times was complicit. . . hardly any political protest was heard from the people. we just all shut up and watched more television. . . so much complacency, and ignorance. . .and laura b, seems very much the good ole-fashioned co-dependent, trophie wife. sure, maybe they are nice people . . . but look what they are responsible for. the worst kind of assholes, indeed are the nice ones.

anyhow, what an art resume builder . . .maybe, I hope, you made a double and can place it somewhere remarkable, in a decade or so. . .like at the top of a steaming landfill mountain or something.

ok, I just had to say that. sometimes I cannot even believe we lived through that bullshit right here in america!"



. . . I went on the say nice, sincere things about his family and place of residence. he has not written back. not a peep.

was I too harsh?

would I have taken such a commission? (well, I HATE bronze sculptures! I can barely think of a more despicable kind of middle class public art!, so hopefully the answer is no. . .) but I sell out all the time as a graphic designer. for me the art is where I try not to compromise my creative integrity. but some people I guess don't think they can take that luxury.

very strange encounter. what did I get out of it? a good story, I suppose. . . also I took a chance to articulate my feelings about that old administration. funny, it was only a few years ago, now. how soon we forget!


-kt

GOODBYE MORELAND AVENUE

4 boarded-up craftsman style cottages have sat lame across from the suburban style shopping center called Edgewood, just south of Little 5pts on Moreland avenue. It's been at least 2 years this way. The only graffiti on the cement bridge nearby is a wheatpaste by local artist R.Land. . . a large graphic of clasp hands which says, "pray for ATL." but plenty of graffiti had accumulated on these 4 houses. . .that is until july 4 th 2009, when they took the first three, leaving one orphaned in public for another 4 days. Until their ultimate point of disappearance, they stood as a large scale unofficial artistic display, a symbol of our ever-changing city.




For now what remains is this staircase. And this is the quintessential (& totally unconscious) public art for atlanta--cement staircases leading to empty lots where a house was removed. Our city is absolutely littered with these particular remnants. Take notice sometime. I think they should all be painted pink or striped yellow, so that they are better marked. . .We should try not lose these wonderful, unobtrusive monuments to the invisible. They are precious breadcrumbs to our recent past.






Here is a house further south on Moreland Ave. . .You can see it's reaching a climax of decoration. Will it be the next to go?

DANCE PARTIES

this is a good one! (from my collection of 70s, national geographic clippings). would make a great billboard, I think.


alas, photographs and parties. . .they do so rapidly. . .disappear!

DOWSING

to "dowse" is to focus on something lost or invisible and divine for its location. according to wikipedia, it's a thousand-year-old tradition coming out of germany. we know about it in association with finding well water. but according to the experts, you can dowse for pots of gold, lay lines, underground waterways, lost slippers, unicorns or just use a pendulum like a ouiji board to derive yes and no answers.

currently, I'm having issues with my house. . .or maybe it's just my life. . .kind of hard to tell. I think there are cosmic forces at work and I want to somehow manage it. . .gosh, there's a lot of conflict and hell breakin' loose. a real tornado stormed over it last year in march (see my houseclearing performance in c'town), and many neighbors say that its mark of chaos is still around. why not act to alter the energy of this place, a little freaked out still from natural disaster? perhaps underground waterways and invisible energy currents are having an effect. if the management of such things are pretend, than it's a good performance. . .but I like to believe in such things.

fiction or not, I believe it's important to design mysticism (an acknowledgement of the unknown) into contemporary suburban reality. (an interesting match, and, perhaps, a natural progression).

so, in search of energy experts, I set out to the georgia dowser's monthly meeting in the appropriately named northern suburb of atlanta, roswell. (see new mexico & UFOs). . .a friend forwarded me the ga dowser website with this caveat: "I go just for the theatre. . ."

more coming some day I feel like retelling the story. . . .or you can ask me to tell you sometime in person : )

SUNSETS & OTHER GRAPHICS

this is a clipping from a newspaper advertisement, where sunsets are about as commonplace as yellow graphic bursts.




I once saw a billboard when travelling in florida. . .it said:

"We'll sell you a sunset!"

. . .in brush script!

COUNTRY VS SUBURBS, WHO WILL WIN?

I have a graphic design press check that takes me way out into the western suburbs of atlanta about every two months or so. . .

I drive 20 minutes up the big interstate and exit into a scourge of brand new development, temporarily slowed by economic downturn. I am quite familiar with such sites, for this is the kind of transitional locale that I grew up in. areas like this are filled with a sense of passive non-place. The old countryside environment is defenseless to erasure; it is removed in neat square chunks by an oddly opposite, big box commercialism. Such development, now somewhat passé in urban centers, still attempts to multiply out here, but the country roots remain. . .stand side by side with the new emerging artificial environment. it reminds me of how such places COULD be developed in a radically different way. who knows. . .if the economy continues to collapse, these places may stand a chance.




. . .I found an old cemetery across the street from a walgreens shopping plaza. a dirt road veers from lines of traffic into a shady vertical strip of contemplative land. this beautiful empty lot is preserved for the dead. it's full of buttercups, grassy shade and fake flowers on turn-of-the-century stone graves.








down the road are lovely meadows, cleared a few years ago and now in bloom, with blue plastic pipes poking up and capped for future construction. old houses sit empty and overgrown with vines, awaiting removal







. . .no bother hanging for sale signs here. . . these are ghost scenes of the future.




everytime I drive out here, there is a tremendously appealing series of parkinglots that sit on the crest of a hill. I can see this awesome empty place--grassy and decorated with graffiti--well from the highway.

on this particular trip, I attempted to locate it, getting on an access road. but alas, it disappeared. . . .I did however find a very cool commercial building--an old "LA FITNESS" center. the landscaping is old enough to have grown in, making a really gardenesque parking lot!. . .and this reminds me just how great repurposing such a site could potentially be.







my imagination takes me away. I think of the movie set. . .you know where subculture freaks hold meetings and black-market deals at the back. . .


(here's the back of the place. . .pretty seedy)

but also I think of the subterranean garden that could be carved out of the entrance area. . .and also the tremendous roof-top garden. in some kind future, this would be a hang out with a small stage and designed green space. . .where you'd find sculptured shrubs, birds, weeping willows and lovers holding hands. . .why not?

SUBURBAN AVANT-GARDE

. . .MY VISIT TO ARTIST E.K.HUCKABY'S COUNTRY DOMAIN IN SUBURBAN ATLANTA. . .

artists certainly can create the illusion of time-travel. there's a certain brand of artist that picks the pockets from the past and recreates a living alternative world, immune for as long as the artist lives, from the realities of the mainstream. and I dare say such artists are very precious librarians. . . that present a carefully designed past.

there's something of 1910 in huckaby's place, as well as something deeper from a 19th century southern countryside. there are overarching tones of asia, and also the brutality of body in this magical fiction e.k. huckaby lives inside. on Huckaby Rd, he shares the country-ish block with mcmansions, and subdivisions named "the chimneys," yet e.k. roams 30 acres of land, planting groves of bamboo. here, he stubbornly holds back time. . .thank god there are people like him.



. . .and he's open for visits. we had coffee in his kitchen as music boxes were somehow amplified throughout the house. the windows were open, blowing off the dust from a lot of encrusted objects, including photographs and paintings.

I was surprised to find out he actually grew up in the suburbs. I now better understandand why, perhaps he was attracted to expound into, artistically, this other bygone southern lifetyle. I, too, am a product of those historyless, identityless suburbs, and tend to fictionalize pasts as a result.

lots of good books around, stately shelves are made from cut up doors and installed in the dark central hallway. . he has a clever code: vertical books, he's read, horizontal ones are yet unread. his bedroom is painted the most wonderful dusty purple, with black trim. . .his bed sits in the center of the room surrounded on the walls by a collection of funerary photographs, most of them turn of the century. ( amazing! )



as we walked through the woods looking for sprouting bamboo, I said something about the layers of memory this place must have for him. . .he retorted that not all of them are so romantic. . . he remembered hogs being hung from that tree there, being disemboweled.



his manner is gentle and patient, but his objects present sharper edges, a morose love of age . . .I relate. I also see a sense of humor there. . .and, of course a refreshing fearlessness of mortality. I think he enjoys sneaking up on you in this subtle way. he's confident. he has all the time in the world.



here is a quick list of objects that left an impact: bones, a real placenta under glass, stuffed birds, a fox with glasses, decaying paper lanterns, a geometric glass box, a slice of brain wedged beween glass, saws, teeth, a lot of white rocks in piles, a stack of black books about myth and the devil, a girl with a candle inside a large glass lantern, a real maxfield parrish print, busts and clocks, a wax telephone on red velvet in side a plexiglass box, a resin-thick painting of a thousand lamps, boxing gloves, seeds.

I asked him if he was a theosophist or spiritualist. he said, he has his own version of theosophy. . . (note to self: ask him about that on the next trip to wonderland.)

here's a really great interview robert cheatham did with e.k.

URBAN CENTERS = "CORPORATE HUBS"

"several factors make widespread revolt less likely today. Our cities are no longer dense, overcrowded industrial centers where unionized laborers and disgruntled strikers might take a public stand. Concentrated inner-city poverty has declined, too, so don’t expect 1960s-style ghetto unrest."

Our urban centers are instead corporate hubs and the victims of this recession include hundreds of thousands of white-collar workers. For obvious reasons, these folks tend not to have the particular sense of grievance — that a select few are receiving preferential treatment, that they’re on the losing end of a rigged game — that usually sets off a conflagration."

-FROM
Feeling Too Down to Rise Up
(Op-Ed -new york times)
By SUDHIR VENKATESH
March 29, 2009

(photo courtesy of isolina)

but of course the writer is an established new yorker (columbia u, new york times, etc. . .), he seems quite nostalgic for the kind of urbanity places like new york city used to provide. he nails it when he demeans today's urban centers to "corporate hubs."

(interesting to note, that this was published just days before the "Financial Fools day" G-20 protests in London, which seemed to contractict this. . .)

another related note: I've been watching new york chef and food critic anthony bordain's "no reservations" on dvd. . . the most recent episode went to las vegas, where bordain just freaks out over a commercialized replica of his home city inside some casino: new york city converted into a "T.G.I. McFriday's," he complains. . . (and as he walks through "venice" he calls it: "gondolas in swimming pools inside a mall". . .) . . .in the end, he states sadly to the camera:

it may seem as though las vegas reproduces new york city, but actually its more like. . . new york city is becoming las vegas. . .

(and the removed las vegas is in a sign graveyard for tourists)



alas, from two new yorker's points of views, A+ American cities are not the edgy cultural-political wonderlands of yore. . . so it makes you wonder, then is there really no one gathering physically for dissent, and also for counterculture experience, as this author worries out loud? are there really not enough numbers for resistance to the monoculture?

i really doubt it.

perhaps as the "public" gets more pervasive online, and urban centers only hubs of glassed-in safety. . .the subcultures must become more secret, and more remote. perhaps it's not the urban centers which will provide the space for these gatherings. . but the wildernesses (in all senses of the word. . .) interesting.

-kt

WINDOW WORLD

(FOUND PHOTO, courtesy Misty Harper, great collector of objects and fictions. . .)

"Window World" is a fantastic logo I once saw on the side of a truck. Plenty banal, it advertised a window company, eager to install professional sturdy windows in homes and businesses world wide. . .

but, I thought the phrase was brilliant. . .it fits a larger understanding of our shared reality which is becoming quite imprisoned inside windows. we live our lives inside. . .but gaze outward through computer screens, windshields, bay windows, glass houses, corporate buildings, the endless lenses of cameras, etc. . .and I suppose a problem with that sort of 2-dimensional exterior, is that it can be so easily manipulated. we start to believe the screen version. . .or the image projected inside the window, instead of going out there to see (and touch) for ourselves. we become fearful and disconnected with the actual outside, and yet in love with it from an unconsummated distance. . .fiction is more dramatic and exciting than hard-knocks reality, anyway. who would want to live outside, unprotected. . . staring inward with the rest of the derelicts on the other side of the glass?



In an interview about his new book called The Disappearance of the Outside , Andrei Codrescu spoke to the same idea . . .that we now live in the interior. surprisingly, Codrescu traces our migration to the interior to the 1970s. but, I thought this migration was directly related to the introduction of the internet. curiously, when you look at the visual fiction of the 70s, the wildness and nature are very present (e.g . . .). that's interesting.

(more later. . . . . . . . .)

ACCIDENTZ

I believe that time (a rather flexible material) is moving faster than ever before. . .due to many reasons including the advancement of communications technologies, we move through shared time together at a speed that is now faster than logic.

this is the reason I think the industrial age is entering a new re-spiritualized phase. to flow with the pace of the global mainstream, one must stay light and mobile. that's in attitude and in material weight. to take the time to consider things, to follow the rigors of logic, is very expensive in time. time spent this way must be strategic in our new superspeedy reality. those who do well, can change on a dime, readjust to new situations rapidly, make wise decisions on the spot. . .and, this style of living, I believe, is done best with a keen sense of intuition. increasingly people must feel their way through--no time to weigh the choices carefully.

with everyone rushing about, socializing and responding instantly at all times, travelling at breakneck speeds, able to change directions like psychotic atoms in cyberspace, constantly updating how things are done, keeping track of what everyone else is doing through our new society of cameras and channels of communicaitons. . .it's no wonder there are a proliferation of accidentz.

ironically, as we achieve unprecedented control over the world through technology, we also spin easily out of control and CRASH alot.

this is not a bad thing, aside from the pains and shocks of collisions. an accident is a moment when things stop or slow down after an explosive shock. it is a most raw, human and honest moment. . .it sobers things up. . .it makes a mark in time (a scar, perhaps). it reminds us of our mortality . . .of the power of things beyond our control (like nature) . . .and also of our own carelessness.

accidentz are not new. they have always been a sexy spectacle of the industrial revolution. look at the picture above: a famous crash in victorville, CA 1968, "topless mother of eight" is decapitated. this is my copy of the police photograph. I have altered it to remove the accident from the landscape. . .an act of geographic healing.

THEORY OF OBJECTS

are you someone who leaves drawers open?

(cabinets, books, etc.)

I am.

what does that say about a person? . . .I like to leave a room with all the drawers ajar. someone might think I'm mad.

the kitchen. . .the studio. I want to leave a place and think. . .there's something left here for me to go back to. . .I don't want to close up anything from my sight which I haven't fully mined through. . . keeping options open, made literal.

what am I looking for and have not found? not sure. . .
but sometimes I have a heart attack, when I open a good drawer.

how good is my magic today?

(**LIBRARY OF OBJECTS**)