son house

i'll be your mirror...

among the rainniar eht gnoma
and lightssthgil dna
i saw the figure 5 erugif eht was i
in golddlog ni
on a redder a no
fire truckkcurt erif
movinggnivom
tenseesnet
unheededdedeehnu
to gong clangssgnalc gnog ot
siren howlsslwoh neris
and wheels rumblinggnilbmur sleehw dna
through the dark city..ytic krad eht hguorht

william carlos williamssmailliw solrac mailliw

out of context, into mind...

meanwhile, not far away, at the state prison: "i must think harder -
concentrate on my thoughts - make my tentacles obey me!"

new sound installation...

i currently have a new sound installation up at art center's williamson gallery in pasadena. the show runs until january 15. the sound piece was created using recordings i received from JPL, and an old LP of recordings of the ionosphere via tape recorders circa 1955.

the exhibition was curated by stephen nowlin, and contains some wonderful work by semiconductor, michael c mcmillan, rebecca mendez, and others.

you can see images of some of the works in the exhibition, along with my sound on this youtube clip...

more goodness from the pompidou's recent acquisitions

"the japanese painter ryochi shigeta lived in paris from 1958-64, and theni boxton before returning to japan in 1966, and showing tokyo his first investigation on curved and cyindrical surfaces.
in 1969, masaomi unagami director of printing-ink manufacturers dainishi sieka sugested that he continue his researches on the two chimneys of his factory, and ryoichi shigeta thus shifted his focus from the decoration of traditional japanese pottery to industrial architecture. with his monumental motifs and the contrast of complimentary colours - orange and blue - he destructured the volumes of the chimneys. treated in this supergraphic manner, these became color signals in tokyo's industrial landscape."
museum wall label...

when sensibilities are shared...

a few days ago i was lucky enough to visit the pompidou, and they had a whole slew of recent acquisitions on display. as i walked into one of the galleries, i was elated to see several of andre cadere's "round wooden bars" from the mid-1970's. i have always loved these works - both their visual aesthetic as sculpture and the performances he did by carrying these works with him to openings, or placing them in the street, etc. they always seemed perfect to me, but i have seldom found a way to articulate why my response to them has always been so strong.

as i moved from the sculpture, i gravitated towards a painting on the adjacent wall. as you can see from the image, there are a number of consistencies between this painting and a number of my own. when i looked at the wall label to see whose work it might be, i was floored to discover it was an early work of cadere's!!! for i had never seen an image of anything he made before the "round wooden bars" ... and had no idea he began by making abstract paintings! and so, the uncovering of this early work suggested that my deep response to the "round wooden bars" over the last 20 years was not just an awkward coincidence, an interest in the proposition of provocation nor a simple aesthetic response to the minimal nature of the work (something i respond to quite strongly, but have never really been able to negotiate within my own paintings) - but is instead a kind of uncovering of an unspoken shared sensibility.

even the wall text felt relevant to my own work: ... "he was making a kind of op art with folkloric and psychedelic touches... introducing the play of chromatic permutations..."

of course, i am not in any way suggesting that cadere's work and my own are consistent, or that i am somehow contextualizing myself within his stature; but nonetheless, it is a wonderful thing when you find these deeper connections to a work and/or artist you respond to. in discovering this painting as a piece of cadere's beginnings, i begin to feel closer to him, and i acknowledge (as i hope that he would too if he were alive) that there is something clearly shared.

in truth, the painting really just made me happy that one of my heroes feels a little bit closer to my own feeble path...