finally, a thought

so here i am in Rochester, NY, on a residency. i thought, while here, i'd be posting more, that my thoughts would be clearer, that everything would fall into place after a crazy hectic six months or so. i was not entirely wrong, but i think i thought i'd just switch gears and that'd be it. i know better, really i do. the list is too big. at least now i'm honestly trying ot tackle one thing at a time., instead of 3 or 4. and speaking of that list, its still in my brain and not on paper. something i also know better about, when you write it down you aleviate some worries. i'll do it tommorrow, along with laundry....

Rochester isn't a bad town, and the Visual Studies Workshop isn't a bad place to be. i live in the building where the studio facilities are, and i'm here by myself what feels like 90% of the time. the interesting thing about it though is through facebook and skype and the internet well, i'm not really alone. esp facebook, cos you all are out there if/when i need you, sitting by the computer just like me, emailing, color correcting, watching youtube, etc. and we share. although some part of that equation seems like it should be "sad", in that we're not interating in person, actually i've come to believe its not. if i want to make my work, i need to be here, in front of this laptop, next to the darkroom, exposing cyanotypes for 35 no 40 no 50 minutes, using 5% acedic acid diluted to be a 5 solution in water, yadda yadda. and lucky for me, a whole bunch of you also need to be by your machines to do the things that make you tick. so united we sit.......

and i still have my moments of being 21 again (ok, for me more like 25), staying out talking til 4AM, because at times i can, my job allows for it and i'm thankful. i just can't do it every weekend like i used to. i think its necessary sometimes to give perspective, and remember the world outsidethe 9-5. and, well, the longer i'm here in Rochester on my own, the more my schedule shifts towards a 12PM - 3AM world. this happened the last time i was on a residency, so its not so unexpected.

i'm torn between making work about where i am, and making work that i proposed to make. right now i'm doing the latter, as i thought i would require less prep work, but ultimately its really the same, as the "prep" work i did previously was half cocked. i just got the roll of film i need to use, and because of that i pretty much needed to start testing out everythign iwas doing again. i've been attemting to learn gum printing, but its a beast. i have 12 other things i wanted to accomplish, but all i really want to do is ride my bike around and take pictures.

i know i shoudl take advantage of the reseach library here, especially because i'm going to be a profesor next year. talk about life change.....i still am not sure how this is all going to pan out. well, theres know way of knowing. i bounce between thinking "you can handle this" to "OMG you better get those lesson plans together RIGHT NOW!!!". I've taught 2 classes a semester before, while working a full time job and other stuff on top of that, but this is 15 weeks of classes meeting 2 times a week. i'm worried about keeping the students attention. i don't want them to get bored. the thing i'm not going to be used to is the fact that i will be able to just focus on them...i won't have this other full time job to worry about which takes up 40 hours of my week. weird!!!! but, ultimately, super awesome. unbelievably awesome.

then there's the whole commuting/Providence thing. as betsy pointed out the other day, all our friends have moved outside the city anyway. and its more than just that, so many things are up in the air. who knows if our new landlord is going to renew our lease? other personal issues are up in the air anyway, now they're x2. yet i'm worried i won't be able to make art without the city, without its struggles and strains and ultimately its energy. i've been other places, and the energy just is not the same.

at the same time i do sort of have a weird side "reailty" (shall we call it for lack of a better term). My job at Brown give me a studio. yeah. so, i should just move there, i'm not sure why i'm pussyfooting around that. well i do, i mean providence is not NY, and there was a mall next to the train station which throughly scared the bejesus out of me. but anyway, what if........i can live in a place where i can make music too, bring my drum set back, have it all ready to go. i've always felt bad that my speakers have to live in an apartment, i barely can move the dial to 1/4 before they are too loud (they are HUGE and i got them for free, but thats another story).

alright, anyway, my cyanotype is cooked. more tomorrow

New Cooper Building photo update and Foundation Building Hole!

The NAB is sloowwwwly being closed up, supposedly (hopefully!) to be ready for the Fall semester. Its looking pretty good. We're all wondering how they are going to finish the corner details of the skin.

also, they are doing a big renovation of the heating and cooling of the Foundation building. they had to get out a huge hole in front to get out some of the machinery.

images from cooper union "quality service" show

An image of the wall installation i put up today for the show! it was a fun process learning this new material (pro-tex wallpaper-like removable sticky-back inkjet paper), and working around a few of my printing faux pas. overall ithink it turned out alright, and a step toward the future.......



cyanotype 30"x 38" right around the corner:



some installation diagrams kindly penned by my lovely assistant for the day - Alannah Farrell (aren't they fun! i love the drawings she made):







A shot of my studio form the night before, cut outs by myself with help from Natalia:

the 25 things you all were asking for........

is on the face book yom, notes. they made me,......go to there....

no more mushrooms

a cold finally caught up to me, yesterday. been trying to take it easy, watching some sarah connor chronicles and samantha who? both from season 1. room is a mess from trying to fill out applications over the weekend, its hard to look at and not want to clean up. yesterday i remembered i had this bottle of awesome mushroom tincture which boosts your immune system, but its almost gone and i can't seem to find it in the city (metagenics: mycoferon), which has made me very sad. how am i going to get better now? still on this colon detox, until thursday, but i have to admit that i'm not following the dietary guidelines very closely. so, well, it will still do some kind of job, just maybe not the best. i have been giving my liver a rest though, so at least thats something. i thought maybe at first this "cold" was related to detoxing, but i think its a real cold. maybe i need some vitamins, which the "dietary guidelines" would be providing if i were following them more closely. but bugger, i'm sick and don't want to cook - so soup from a can is just fine. anyway, here's some iphone pix from a mid-morning walk last week with my gal somewhere in the east village, i can't remember where now, but up in the alphabets below nearish to 14th.....so many reflections! i need a mini polarizing filter for the cameraphone!! they had awesome little plants inside...truly other worlds, and thay were huge! some were 2' wide.

promised myself i'd go to sleep on time tonight

last night i got sucked into you tube, then there was an incessant barky dog outside for like 2 hours, THEN a couple all bundled up in winter jackets, proceeded to have an almost fist fight outside my window at like 4 AM. or something. so, even though i've gotten myself slightly more organized to tackle the week ahead, i really should just go to bed now. i want to show you pictures from walking around chicago. and i already posted a bunch of pictures from home on facebook. and i have like 6 rolls of film to get processed. all of this not related to any real up and coming art project. i have to pack 4 pieces to go to the slow way to Seattle....seems like its going to be a great show at Platform Gallery, i wish i could be there! this is my first "someone found me" show, i.e. i was asked out of the blue to be in it, and it just feels great! new hard drive for my computer is coming tomorrow, with a new back up drive, hopefully soon my new keyboard will be here so the laptop can be portable again (dont' spill things on it, its a no-no. especially when you don't recall spilling anything on it, but obviously something was spilled on it). work starts tomorrow, which isn't necessarily a bad thing because i work best against the grain. i have a bunch of teaching stuff to apply for, hopefully i can write some cover letters without too much brain numbing action. and i want to alter the desk in my (half) studio. lets just hope martin luther king day is farther away than i think it is. all this and the day has been spent reading final papers from digital photo last semester with yo-yo ma playing Bach cello suites in the background. all i can say is in some sick sense its good that there was only one season of Firefly, or would have gotten nothing done at all this weekend.

have to figure out how to post things here, on flickr, and facebook simultaneously. or not.

and i have to finish that book about richard nickel in 2009. or any book. seriously. not counting the ones with mostly pictures.

to sleep. now.

It's Sunday

In the car, something called "prehistoric X" on the radio , all music from high school. "she sells sanctuary" is just ending. Along with this facebook slide into the past this holiday, I have been fighting pulling out the yearbooks. All these really hazy memories of people, it's like puzzle pieces fitting together. SO strange.

-- Post From My iPhone