SMOKE STACKS IN PARADISE

though undoubtedly toxic, the view of the billowing industrial stacks from the back of our beach house was quite a beautiful site. we quickly acknowledged the dominant looming landmark. fernandina beach, the first ocean destination over the florida line from georgia is indeed a paradise that lives under the hazy backdrop of an active paper mill.

. . we obsessed over the site as it made misty rainbows in the night. we moved a deck table set out front which was there to catch a mere sliver of the "oceanfront view". . . and immediately rolled it to the back porch for romantic dinners under the soft moving volcano of pollution. it puffed over an impressive thicket of wildlife preserve and we toasted to our vacation.

it's funny when people live in paradise. . .I was like many people who hated florida. we were nature lovers, heartbroken to see palm trees, dunes and clear waters compete and lose to commercialism. but I'm happy to report that I had a sort of breakthrough. . .I started to see the paradise again -- through (or despite) the human developments; it's still there--the wonderment of florida--smiling, tolerant and surviving. . . .

CARTERSVILLE PALACES

"palace" is a relative term. . .

just the other day, I discovered a personal note (from myself) in a book. following some kind of new age whim, I had listed my heart's desires in red marker on a small slip of paper. maybe I did that over a year ago: my long term relationship having recently disappeared, I was marooned in feelings of abandonment and loss. . . it was a good exercise: to wish upon new things and then let it go.

so, the note reappeared by accident. (actually, someone else found it. . .he said he didn't read it. . .)

the re-read was not too embarrassing--not as bad as re-reading journals from junior high. . .I list the usual desire for love and travel and artmaking. . .but at the bottom of the list, I add something rather curious :
"to live in a palace : )"

so, this new friend (the one who found the note) invited me to Cartersville on a real estate adventure this past weekend, where I got to walk through just such an empty suburban palace on a very sunny day.

(I thought it was an interesting synchronicity)

here are the pictures:

the bones of the old farmland shined through the suburban complex, now aging comfortably without the pressure of imminent development.

pools, grandiose sheds, comfortable lounging porches, generous windows over master bedroom tubs, Palladian grand entrances that lead through the house and out to unused fields. here, was a picture of how the crash intervened to create a modified country setting. no doubt, the neighbors live in their own private palaces, in a sort of quiet paradise, . . . which I found oddly appealing.

on the way home, large lots cleared for subdivisions now blossom with new pines and fluffy native aster. someone flew a remote-control toy plane over another field just as we drove out in the late afternoon sun. it flipped and turned with incredible precision. it dashed straight up into the sky until gravity got the best of it and pulled it back down to earth.

REAL ESTATE SIGN / REDONE!

I like to play with the property around my house. some of it is mine, and some of it is not. I live in a very public place. I try to make it entertaining and also call into question the meaning of public and private space. my friend stan woodard is running for president. . .well, not really. he has made an art opera where he acts as if he is running for president. he left me a campaign sign, which I was happy to put up at my corner of the world. one day, a real estate agent placed an open house sign with a lovely blue balloon attached to it. I couldn't resist and spray painted it into an artwork. . . of course, this kind of opens up a whole new body of work. . .we'll see where it goes. perhaps in the future, instead of playing with text, I can just use the signs, vinyl starbursts and balloons and make them into colorful displays. it would be interesting how they would feel without the words to sell the product. . .

TRACKING XMASS TREES 2011

I arrived at _______ (a big box store which will remain anonymous) in time to see a large portion of their garden department empty. blank isles were lined with curious cement block pyramids ready for the 2011 shipment of Xmass trees. . .my timing was perfect to document one season of our most conspicuous consumer symbols -- the Xmass trees. They arrive in mass to the market and then disappear. we create whole temporary forests growing in parking lots, which we ritualistically tear down, only to have crop up again next year.





for a few januaries in a row, I noticed a mountain of dried up Xmass trees piling up behind _____ (a different big box store which will remain anonymous). I made a note of this--wanting to document it some day. we live through this incredible annual public process of cutting, marketing, selling, bringing into our homes, and then throwing away "evergreen" trees. given a new context of greater Earth awareness (weather change, earthquakes, volcanoes, deforestation, ozone depletion, etc, etc. . . ) this major american tradition reveals some important aspects of how our relationship with nature is f-cked up. perhaps this is a tradition that needs to be secularized and twisted into an act which upholds society's new respect for trees, plants & forests . . . instead of repeating a blind ritual which unconsciously instills the disappearance of our beloved natural environment. ( yes, it's an outrageously idealistic proposal. . .but not entirely impossible )

END OF "THE MEADOW"

for two years I have tended a meadow in the empty lot next to my house. I do not own this property, but have been making art there for three years. It all started in reaction to some intolerance towards public art in my neighborhood. I was pissed off at a new wave of gentrifiers who were "cleaning" things up. so I took a course of counter-action: I built a custom billboard which stood 25 feet high, cascading in part over the back of my house and also stretching into my neighbor's territory by a few feet. I did not ask permission. I did ask for funding from within the arts community and did it. I made it an art show since I live on a very public corner! And for the show, I unleashed an unofficial commercial-like neon sign which would not be provocative in it's message, only in the audacity of building it, squeezed between cute little working class houses. mind you, this is a neighorhood with a historic designation. if someone was going to press me, I was to claim that billboards are historic. I mean, a highway borders the south side of the hood and there are plenty of old billboards there. (it's a long saga. . .click here for the full story of my "PARADISE" sign) the wild meadow in the rest of the empty lot was the companion piece.

alas, a few weeks ago it finally happened. The sword of Damocles dropped. the property owner showed up with a bobcat and tore down the meadow and the billboard. it was rough day. I was too emotional to document it--a critical art mistake on my part. after it was done, they sprinkled cement dust on the entire surface of the lot, to make it a parking lot again. and I sat in my house feeling defeated.

Why? from the beginning, I knew that I was playing with this space temporarily. I was connected to this land, not by conventional means, but through personal presence and energy work, the way ancient people or animals stand guard over territory. I had challenged the gentrifiers to tear down my wild and free "paradise." But it's been years now. . . I was allowed domain over this space for years. In the end, I was almost relieved not to have to go through the trouble of a total deinstall or some official ending. I had not secured a place for the sign to go. early on, one immediate neighbor complained about the light of the neon in her bedroom, and I had to take that neon part down. but I left the structure up and played with it. . .it was great just as an empty framework. . .the design was beautiful on its own, especially as I gardened through several seasons of wildflowers in bloom. passersby thanked me for it all the time. and there was only the occasional hater. I had made this territory next to my home, which was dead and ugly--an inert hunk of land to be bought and sold--into a magical art & design center. and, now that it was over, I still wanted to find a way to deter people from actually parking in this space. After some consideration, and a little recovery time, my friend Crystal and I created a walking labyrinth in the space.

not sure how to maintain it or if I should at all. Am I being too agressive? I've always wanted to design a secondary use for parking lots. . .as places to walk and contemplate when not filled up with cars. . .Imagine a parking lot labyrinth outlined in neon and powered by solar! It could happen temporarily as a conventional public artwork. or for a future time. . . there might be many such parking lot labyrinths created in the leftover cement gardens after the age of the car. . . lord knows, there will be so many of them!

Online curation: THE NATURE OF NEON, the neon of nature

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Is there nothing less corruptible--or more delicious-- than a flower, a rainbow or a butterfly? Our sense of beauty is rooted in nature.

But our innate attraction to the brief ecstatic colors that only momentarily exist in the real world is reproduced and sustained artificially in order to sell things. As we thirst for color and hope, the advertising industry confuses us. Like lost hummingbirds, we vulnerably respond to ads and signage that glow all night like flowers.

1. Jennifer Steincamp, "Cornering" 2. Daniel Gordon, " July 27" 3. Daniel Gordon, " July 21" 4. Christos Dikeako, "Rhodeodendrons" 5. Mark Borthwick 6. Greg Rose (two images: "Arcadia" & "Promenade") 7. screen pic from the movie "Liquid Sky" (1983) 8. Kevin Schmidt, "Johnson Lake" 9 & 10. Project Eden (a tourist destination in England)

DEATH & OCTOBER online curation

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1. Sanne Sannes, 60s vintage photograph 2. David Hominal 3. ?? 4. ?? 5. Sanithna Phansavanh "cross water to lose a ghost," graphite on paper 6. Dacula, GA (1915) 7. Public Ad Campaign, "video tape" 8. indian mound/railroad (1876), Macon-GA 9. ??

THE URBAN OUTSIDE

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1.Maplewood Mudflat, a notorious Vancouver squat photographed by Tom Burroughs * note--an artist movement emerged here, responding to the suburbanization of the city in the 70s . 2. pothole planting in Mexico (an act of guerilla gardening) 3. Stephen Shore, U.S. 97, South of Klamath Falls, Oregon, July 21, 1973, 2002 4. Thomas Glassford 5. Agnes Denes, Wheatfield, A Confrontation 1982. 6. Momo (street art) 7. ?? 8. Cristina Lucas 9. Agnes Denes, Forest 10. Arte Sella sculpture park, in an Alpine valley high above Borgo Valsugana, Italy.