Beep, Beep! The Woodworking Bus

Side Street Projects is this awesome organization created to be a resource for artists as well as to offer art programs for kids in the L.A. area. I look a course called "Get Your Sh*t Together" that covered everything from taxes to grant-writing to portfolio cataloging for fine artists. One of the coolest things they have is a traveling school bus that houses a woodworking studio. How great it is to see all these kids so enthralled with the tactile and creative process of woodworking!

the Why Cheap Art? manifesto

Bread and Puppet: breadandpuppet.org. Nuff said.

Video Fun

My partner-in-crime Shannon and I went to see the California video show at the Getty last week. That may not sound like a big deal to you but it's a big to me/us ... I don't think I've been to the Getty in a couple of years. It's daunting to try to take in a show that's entirely made up of video work. It sort of made me feel bad for people who have to see my video work -- it's a HUGE time commitment and there isn't much in terms of pay-off at the end, which is what people normally expect when seeing something in the moving pictures vein. Not that all video art is obtuse. I definitely saw several pieces that were very accessible, whether it be on a visceral or narrative level. I don't know why I feel responsible for my audience enjoying themselves, especially when this isn't necessarily the objective when I'm making the pieces. I suppose I just want to be a good hostess. Anyway, Shannon and I are going to start working on stuff at our next meeting. Well, we're going to revisit an old piece anyway. It was finished off pretty quickly because of our then pending art show but it may need to be fleshed out a bit more. I don't have a web-friendly version of it but here are a couple of photo stills ...

Color Pencil Pal

List of things I pleasantly surprised myself by doing in the last few days:

1. Take a morning walk in Griffith Park with my roommate
2. Go to the Getty Museum to see the California Video show
3. Bake my first-ever vegan cupcakes
4. Write my resume
5. Write a poem, sort of
6. Draw

To specifically address #5 and #6, I've been working on an on-going project with a friend and the help of the US Postal Service. It goes like this: Brande started with a journal. I started with a journal. The first week, we each drew and/or wrote something on the first page. We then mailed our respective journals to the other person and we had a week to come up with something on the next page. And so on and so forth. We are 6-weeks in, and the following are images from Brande's journal (meaning the first image is by Brande). When I get "my" journal in a few days, I'll post images from that as well.

Brande

Me

Brande

Me

Brande

Me

TED Conference 2003

Brazilian-born, NY-based artist Vik Muniz spoke on creativity at the 2003 TED Conference in Monterey, CA. It's 15 minutes but I assure you it's worth your time! You'll be amused and touched and challenged/inspired about what it means to be creative, what it means to negotiate that space between audience and artist. It's not as straight-forward as we often make it seem. This is the sort of thing I think I aspire to do ... Maybe some day soon?

Farmer in the Mac

I am so over Dell, especially seeing what my roommate had to go through with their customer service. Ew. Anyway, after much ... inactivity ... I powered through and put together a much more presentable online portfolio for The Think Farm. I always knew this would have to be priority before I did anything with my art practice on the web. TTF is still a work in progress -- a whole section is missing -- but it feels nice to have something decent up there at least!