Update

Well, I'm really busy right now at Parker's Box, where Virginie Barre (a French artist) is about to have her first NY solo show, which mixes up Bauhaus forms with American Indians. I have been constructing a massive platform and box-like wall that hangs from another wall. I am getting really good at making walls now. Haven't been blogging much, so sorry, will be heading back to Savannah Sunday, am somewhat excited. NY has been a great experience for me. I have met so many people and been involved with more projects than I thought I would. Have also seen lots of shows and gotten a lot better idea of how the art-world functions. Will be sorry to leave, but I'll just have to come back soon.

Daves tips for NYC

Dave’s Top Ten Tips for living in NYC:

1. Be Ready

I am convinced that many of the homeless here stay by their own decision. They could hop a train to Savannah or Miami for the Winter! If they can hack it, so can you- but it will not be without some sacrifices. People tend to get paid more in NY, but don’t count on it, and even if you find cheap stuff, rent and everything else here is pumped up in price. Save where you can.

2. Look Both Ways

Way too many sorry souls meet their demise with an oncoming bus. I recall a near miss with a hurtling garbage truck. New Yorkers love to jay-walk and cross on red- but don’t get lackadaisical or you will pay big time.

3. Roll with the punches

New Yorkers can be sensitive or cool and intellectual, just like anywhere else I guess. But the street-wise are a little brash; they might be working class and they’re proud that they scrape by in this rat-trap. Never be offended and be ready for some jibes and jibe back- it’s the only way.

4. Late night subways

If you’re faced with taking the subway late night, first of all, once you’re on, DO NOT GO TO SLEEP or you might (like me) wake up on 240th street in the Bronx at 3 am. This, I have been told, is very dangerous. Second of all, you must make a decision- don’t count on the subway coming any time soon. Basically if you are less than 30 blocks away and you will have to make a change in train lines, just walk. You might want to walk anyway (sometimes its half an hour wait at night). If the weather’s bad then take the subway.

5. Don’t ask too many questions

Most people in NY are not from NY. While many pride themselves in how well they know the city, just as many are likely to be clueless. In order not to wear out your welcome or attain false information, try to figure as much out for yourself as you can.

6. On the cheap

$1 pizza? $3 beers? They still exist. Find stuff like this and you will live a happy (if possibly somewhat unhealthy) existence. One warning- only get a plate of Chinese food if it is more than $4 a plate.

7. Speaking of Pizza

Don’t diss NY pizza. For some reason Ny’ers cling to this food like a vine to a tree. I’m not saying it’s not good- but I think 10 years ago it was prolly cheaper and better. Don’t expect anything great outta your regular $2 slice, let alone $1 slice. Basically you pay for what you get, and stay away from the bbq-pizza unless you have an unusually strong intestinal tract. And, by the way,, learn to love plain cheese pizza.

8. East/West

As a general rule, because the subways are so disorientating,, you should constantly repeat the direction you are going in under your breath while riding. Adapt for any turns you make as you exit and climb the steps, and you will be oriented when you arrive at chosen detsination.

9. Rain

Try to carry an umbrella. If you don’t carry one, try not to pay more than a few bucks for something that is going to heave inwards with the slightest wind gust.

10. Show some appreciation

Go see someone, they might come see you. Go help someone, they might help you. Backscratching analogies abound. In a place with a gazillion people, these gestures help you and others sort out what/who is important. From my experience, it helps a lot.

More Pics

Jobs

All of a sudden I'm getting paid work in NY. First was the extra Triangle wall in their office area, then Ballou and I constructed a wall in well-known artist Marilyn Minter's studio (Marilyn makes photo-realistic paintings with sign paint on metal!), now I'm headed to Parker's Box, in Brooklyn, to help set up their next show. Yeehaw! Here's a pic of Ballou and Joyce Pensata at Joyce's closing at Parker's Box:

Hunter College Open Studios

Down at SCAD, the Painting Dept. has great Open Studio Days, but it was interesting to see what the illustrious Hunter College's Open Day here in NY was like. It was definitely bustling, and the building is like a maze- all the studios are student built, and they have no assigned spaces. Also, all the MFA's are thrown in together regardless of what media they work in, so everyone is forced to interact pretty intimately. The works shown are by artists recommended that I see by a prof., Ben Dowell and Aisha Bell, withone anon.

First look at my open studio

These are the first pictures I've got from my Open Studio

Aftermath

Get it? After math. My open studios turned out great after much last minute scrambling, everything was hung safely. I want to thank everyone who showed up, your presence really meant a lot to me, as I know some of you had some travelling and you NYCers are so busy!
Pics coming this week.
Also visited Hunter College's MFA Open Studios this weekend which was quite an experience in itself. Those pics coming soon too.
Working with Mike Ballou this week so I'm excited. Ballou was a pioneer of the now internationally renowned Williamsburg, Brooklyn art scene, which provides a sort of alternative to the spectacle of market-minded Chelsea. He used to run a sort of gallery/community called Four Walls that held weekly slide shows, panels, shows, etc. and has been involved in all sorts of different media, refusing to homogenize his work into one "signature style." You guys should Google him.

Discoveries

Wow. Sometimes something obvious hits you over the head like a ton of bricks. I have been reading Richard Dawkins' seminal book on evolution, "The Selfish Gene," and suddenly realized that DNA acts a lot like radioactive material as it is dispersed over generations through sexual reproduction. In other words, one person's full DNA only exists by 1/2 in their child, 1/4 in grand-child, 1/8 in great-grandchild, etc. Just like over a half-life time period a radioactive material will decrease by %50.
At the same time, %50 of one person's DNA may be replicated several times through several children, though it may not be the same %50, and it does not change the fact that the full DNA of any given person will never exist as more than %50/25/12.5/... in any given generation. SO the DNA decrease is not continuous like radioactivity, but the unpredictability of which part will constitute the next %50 is.
After long and arduous contemplation, I think I have realized that my buddy Chris (see comments) is right and what I have referred to above applies only to the gene pool, or chances of inheriting the same genes (although the first child will always have %50 of both). Sorry for the delayed correction.

Crunch time

I have definitely entered the kind of wired-feeling, freaked out part of my time in NY. What do I need to do? What needs fixing? Should I bother inviting anyone I haven’t met, what will they think, what do I need to get? Should I ? etc etc.
Time’s gone so quick here, and there’s always so much going on.
Its hard to create a menu when you’re still cooking the meal for the first time. The installation I have been making in the studio may reflect this somewhat. Delacroix made himself sick working on a deadline for a church. They opened the church with paper hiding his still-not-finished murals. No, that’s not gonna happen to me, and I hope I don’t get sick, but it will be a lot of work in the week and a half.

!

Architecture

When I first arrived here, I posted a pic of the empire state building because of its resemblance to the hyperbolic cone. Heres one that is even closer, in its continuous curved wall that never comes to a point, also maybe the pointiest building in NY (the shop inside the point is the size of a hot-dog stand), Trump's Tower with trees growing out of it a la Hundertwasser, and then the hole beside the EFA where they are starting a new building.

Barry Leva at Mary Boone

Leva's work for this show is sort of like a floor plan/ blueprint. It consists of objects which are arranged geometrically, calling attention to how the space is divided up- passages, etc.

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

I am happy to have gotten the chance to see Hermann Nitsch at Mike Weiss Gallery. I have never seen his paintings before, and they weren't bad, but of course, his 6-day-play involving hundreds of actors all garbed in white performing rituals with carcasses of animals and naked humans took the cake. This is still more socially accpetable stuff probably than his old sex and poo art-shockers, which put poor Paul McCarthy in the girly-man category for gross-out. I have posted one pic I took, from a tamer split-second of this film, but for more check:
http://www.mikeweissgallery.com/html/artistresults.asp?artist=14

Kapital

Another really cool exhibit I've seen recently was Kapital at kent gallery. There were a wide range of works, including Duchamp, Chris Burden, Hans Haacke, and others.

Good visit to Chelsea

ok, I've got a minute to post some pics. Have waited a long time to see Elizabeth Murray's work in person, she shows at Pace Wildenstein (this time in Chelsea). She's known for her unconventionally stretched canvases, crazy composition, bright colors, and cartoonish imagery. In pictures all her edges look clean, but a lot of them a really ragged, the sides show and are unpainted, and she "paints and paints" until it gets pretty goopy in some areas. I wonder why she doesn't give up the pretentions of canvas and just paint on wood- I think she might feel then like she is decorating a sculpture, though. Still, the overall effect is pretty amazing. There were also some smaller works, like sketches that bore some close similarities with Red Grooms.

Open Studio

This is the tentative date, Sunday, 11/19 5-8 PM, stay posted because it may change. If you can't read it my email is dakurt20@student.scad.edu
If you can't make it but want to come by, please email me.!
Have been lazy about posting recently, because I've been focusing on making sure I've got my stuff together for this= focus on the priority. Got some exhibition pics to show soon. Otherwise, working at Triangle this week. Haven't killed Jerry yet.

Plugs

As far as plugs go, there's a couple great MFA shows coming up by my friends in Savannah, check them out:

Patrick Mcgrath:
http://www.scad.edu/exhibitions/features.cfm#151816

and Alex Gingrow:
http://savannahnow.com/node/160526

Quick note

Just a quick warning to commenters:
After getting a couple advertisers chipping in with their bs, I've enabled a function that allows me to view the comment before it posts- so don't worry if it doesn't show up as soon as you write it, cuz now it's gotta be approved, and I'm the boss. I promise, to all my chastisers, not to censor any dissenting opinions, and to provide plugs for worthy art-related enterprises, but this will be up to my discretion.
Bribes may be sent to ... j/k

The rebuild

Rebuilt, but still not on the wall.

Herd and Scene

To begin my Thursday night, early a.m. cogitations: I did a Google search, to find the Angela Hanley Gallery’s “Drink Fight F***” exhibition (please pardon the censorship, but remember that at the moment I am getting some academic credit for this blog- at a school where an event involving baccanalian pursuits such as imbibing in the alcohols must occur without any institutional affiliation and f***ing doesn’t bare even mentioning), because I met the director, Allison Spellacy, when she was a panellist at Triangle (please pardon the long long sentence and possible misspellings of names and “baccanalian” (?)). Anyway- I ended up on an Artforum page called Herd and Scene which leads one to believe that art-openings are really like raves with celebrities and porn stars. As much as I wish I had that experience myself, apart from a couple of experiences with strippers in Savannah my own art-life is comparatively boring. Which got me thinking about the cross currents of pop-culture and high-art. Now, I’m not very old- just turned 28- and not entirely out of it (I listen to current music, but don’t own a t.v. and rarely make it to movies), and I’ve definitely got a crazier side when I’m not listening to talk radio, but I see some art and whether or not I admire it or am jealous of where it gets its creators I think- damn, I’m not painting sailboats, but why am I so traditional and conservative? (again sorry for the long sentence- the point here is for me to make the point before it disappears into the Everglades of my brain). SO…. I realize two things- the first being what kind of work I feel I need to do (not for art-world reasons, but for myself), the second being with regard to the confluence of pop-culture and art. The first thing is that even if I’ve got a very clever idea that I can “do” without making anything I still need to make other stuff that will last a little while and have some kind of noble savage’s instinctive urge to be intimately, physically involved in the creative process. They may not last forever in their physical form or be very sale-able, but yes, they are objects. And I don’t really appreciate seeing one clever idea (or talented action) constantly repeated, but that’s besides the point- I need to make things- not a certain thing, but usually something that does not conform to a formula and hence poses the allure of leading me to something new each time, a surprise.
Now, Pop-culture. It’s pretty great, it’s entertaining, it’s a spectacle, you might get something out of it that’s more than what one group of self-interested people is trying to feed you if you’re critical and “stay tuned.” I have stopped staying tuned. I just can’t slog through 20 minutes of commercials for one hour of t.v. (even if one in ten might be very clever). I’m not much of a consumer- I have no money. I also tend to be skeptical- of the situations I’m presented in commercials, of the basic premise of “Friends,” even of the circumstances in which our hero escapes the explosion in the latest action movie. And I think a lot of people realize these things with me, but the difference is that I stopped feeling entertained and started feeling annoyed. So,maybe I’m being long--winded, but I just don't feel inclined to incorporate tactics of pop media. Even to expose it for what it is often seems like a cliché to me. Capturing Zeitgeist is one thing, but cherrypicking off cheap media at the most embarasses/caters to pop-audiences (implicating oneself), and rarely ackowledges the cynical creative power under which a lot of the crap was originally marketed. So… getting back to Artforum’s society pages… it seems a little like high school, with the insiders referring to how "small" the art-world is and the rest of us feeling left out.

Jerry

The mouse in the studio. There was a mouse in the studio. He/she is tiny- maybe body of an inch- and very cute, but I like to work in private, you know? So the other day he’s (I’m pretty sure from his brash and irrespsonsible behavior it’s a dude) taunting me- running right over the middle of the floor within a couple feet of my feet. Then I see his head poking up over the radiator, scoping everything out. As soon as I flinch, he’s gone. Saw hime on the floor again a couple times. Then, to my amazement he’s climbing up the cable that’s part of my installation! The cable goes straight up and is less than ½ “. So I’m like, I gotta get this lil f-er. I hear a rusting- he’s in the trash can! Easy job! Tied off the bag and dumped Jerry outside. That was two days ago. Jerry’s back.

Disaster Strikes!

I'm having a beer at the Tapas bar, because, well.. You regular readers probably remember that pic I posted a while back of the half-life model with the light in it? It starts out at roughly a 9"x9"x8" box, and I'd gotten it to about 10 feet long, and as each consecutive box is half the volume of the previous, the last box was just a thin strip, a fraction of an inch wide. Anyway, I'd been agonizing over how to get this thing to come out of the wall horizontally, and today I had success. Unfortunately, I still had the last little piece to attach on the end and had not yet secured the heavy part of the structure. Yes, it wobbled and then- DOH! Shatters! At least I won't have to recut all the pieces.