where to sleep in summertime

Today I found out I got into a teaching certification program I applied for and also that I was awarded a residency from the Saltonstall Foundation in Ithaca from May 16-June 16. Sometimes when it rains it can seem like it's been pouring if it's been dry for awhile. I'm excited but having a hard time making all the different pieces fit together on the calendar.

I like this picture of a woman with a resigned newspaper accross her lap, sitting on a porch bed. It seems like another bed begins in the front left corner of the composition. Everything I love-- her tennis shoes, her shirt, her hair, her look of bemusement.

dirty soles

Occasionally there will be a photograph whose figure is clearly imagining their printed paper form for one particular person who is not myself in 2011. This photograph is totally one of them-- risque shots like these are not common finds probably because not that many copies are made of them and because their recipients prize them dearly enough to not let them wind up in the public fray and also perhaps because shots like these dont get put in the scrapbook with all the reast of the much more typical fuddy-duddy family pictures! I love that the bottoms of her feet are dirty.

on cutting

Morgs and I ended our long-haul of a relationship today leaving us both a little cracked up but looking forward to something new and different. I think this break-up picture sort of sums the feeling up-- when you cut out part of the picture it makes the borders a little bit awkward but it helps direct the focus of where you're supposed to be looking.

Gio Ernest and Glenn Otis Saller

Loretta McCosker

This photograph was put in a box of photographs labeled "MEN" and it felt nice to liberate her from such company.

Four shots from out of the dark

Recently I got an email from an old acquaintance from Wesleyan who was a TA for some photography classes I took while I was there. She asked if I could send her some copies of images I took while a student in her class for a job application and after a little digging around I found these and sent them over. Now they're on top of the pile and I've been thinking about these images and what sort of secrets and premonitions they hold in their images about who I was when I took them and who I'd be five years later. Thiscoming summer is my 5-year reunion from Wesleyan and it's a weird feeling to think of all the time between then and now as a single chapter of my story.

one arm between us

For the day after: a photograph of lovers, disconnected.

coupling

Happy happy valentines day.

small windows redux

More small portaits from Vermont, but these much more lavish and varying in decorative flair. Still the same size though-- for pockets?

small windows

All of these came from my excursions in Vermont last November-- they probably were all produced by the same photographer. When I was in Vermont a few summers ago I noticed that a larger percentage of photographs at antique stores had been originally shot locally than in other towns and cities, certainly on the west coast. I think people are more inclined to stay in Vermont-- there's a strong commitment in communities to be self-sustaining and certainly less draw for droves of young transient up-starters than found the in friendlier climates of the west and opportunities of big city life. Consequently, the photographs also show a visual dialect-- there were droves of very very similar portraits all the same size, same layout, similar cardstock and borders.

coming to a head

Yesterday and today I installed these 100 drawings in the final culmination of a project that I started in the summer. It took a long time because I left town for all of August and then again for November and December! My friend George Pfau helped me get them onto the walls yesterday using a finicky scaffolding set-up... basically a board placed between two ladders. The drawings are affixed to small wooden panels, which are held to the wall with super-strong magnets. The night before installation I panicked because I realized that if something with the earth's magnetic poles get shifted in 2012 (aka the end of the world) that they would all fall down. Then I was reminded that this would be a relatively small concern in the face of apocalypse and felt better. It feels so so good to have finished such a monolithic (polylithic?) undertaking and I'm relieved to be done but also wondering what the next big project will be.

welcome to here and now

Ah.... but here I am in California and ready to make some big things happen in 2011. I've got the commission in Noe Valley to wrap up and also have to finish some new work for the CREAM show in February/March. Things are happening! Happy New Year!

vermont is for lovers

Well, okay, this photo seems to actually have originally come from Michigan... definitely not as queer as the lovely Green Mountain State. But it was purchased in Vermont and in my own self-motivted and conceived version of history it came from Vermont and speaks of Vermont and belongs there always. I'm back in California after a long stint of time away at the Vermont Studio Center for a residency and in Ithaca with the family for Christmas. I miss the east coast dearly and find myself pining for it this New Years Eve.

booty

bottle

bottle opener

buffalo

collage

chopsticks

disk