Woohoo! Funemployment here I come!

Well its our last day here on this film in the Art Dept. and I must say i'm a little relived. It hasn't been nearly as exciting a project as "Alice" was but hey it was a job right? So now I am off to join the millions of other "Fun-employed" people around the country and start working for the govt.... aka:Unemployment... But there are a few projects I'll be working on to keep myself busy, maybe I'll post some pics as I am working things out. Anyone know of any jobs in the entertainment industry for a talented art dept kinda guy? Or better yet, wanna go to the beach? :)

Trimpin: The Sound of Invention

I can't wait to see this documentary as I once built a model for this crazy artist during his proposal phase for an installation at the Sea-tac Airport... which he later got and completed... This man is a crazy genius and its great that others can finally see this bizarre man's life in action just like I did so many years ago when I got that gig that summer....

the sound of invention from Peter Esmonde on Vimeo.

A little blast from the past: Burning Man 2007

The penis topiary dancing in the wind during one of the big storms blowing through...


my gif

My Weekend In Pictures

Amazing Tortilla paintings by Joe Bravo...


Some great 9 foot tall Luchador Sculptures


Me and Levi at the Fashion Show downtown for XR Collection


I like being pet by sculptures apparently


Me before the show


Backstage and models are missing...

oh. my. go.......

......d just watch. I'm speechless too..... thanks to Mark for the link.

The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill

Brilliant Banksy!

Black Rock Savings and Loan

Brace yourself Burning Man, cause my project this year is Black Rock Savings and Loan and i'm out to foreclose on people's theme camps! It's just my way of giving you all a taste of the American Dream.

Free Haircut

Now lets hope this doesn't catch on too much or next we'll be hearing of circumcisions done this way!

Da Getty

It was a pretty good weekend for me this week. On Friday I had a little run-in with the law on my way up Vermont Ave. I had been pulled to a stop behind another guzzler of an SUV and decided to pick up a piece of paper on the seat beside me and glance it over. With my window down and grooving (aka singing along) to Erykah Badu, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a cop car pull up beside me. He leaned out his window and informed to stop reading and drive if I didn't want a ticket. The two pimply teenagers in cuffs in the back seat snickered as I said "No problemo." That wasn't the best start to my Friday evening, but it was easy to shake off... Later that night I got to see my good friend Minnesota David for the first time in about a year and a half. We hit the usual spots. He go to see how Jumbo's Clone Room (MJ's) has changed since we used to hang there together. Admittedly I think he dug it more this way with its twinky stripper aesthetic being all the rage. We then headed over to the Regal Beagle, where I ran across Liquid-wayno, it was nice to finally meet him in person.

Saturday was all about hanging with my sister and Uncle Ken who's visiting from back East. We hit Amoeba, Carnie's, and then drove up the coast. Later that night it was time for a wonderful dinner at Ford's Filling Station in Culver City. This restaurant is owned by Harrison Ford's son and boasts a great selection of cured meats, cheeses, wines, great entrees, and one really adorable waiter... hehehe After stuffing ourselves in the swanky digs of Ford's we headed over to the Jazz Bakery to see a performance of Dr.Lonnie Smith and his trio called the Crescent Boogaloo. He is also known as the "Turbanator" sporting his funky muslim garb, beard, and a turban while playing some of the best damn jazz organ you'll ever hear. It had been such a long time since I had been to see some live jazz, and I'm glad this was the show I chipped my teeth on. These performers were incredible at their improvisation and tight knit groove. Everything played was improvised on the spot and played with complete passion. I had forgotten how great jazz is like amazing foreplay... hits you in all the right spots, surprises you at odd moments, and when it really hits the spot, you find yourself vocalizing "Yeah!" "Woo" and of course applause is called for after a good session. hehehehe

Sunday was the perfect day for us to head over to the Getty. The sun was out, the breeze was blowing, it was perfect. Right now their exhibit of California Video/film artists is really intriguing. You have to chack out the footage of the Cramps playing at a sanitarium in the late 70's... what a show that must have been live! The exhibit of photography by Gabriela Iturbide is pretty stunning, with some amazing photos of Gangs in East LA from the mid 80's that show compassion and a huge amount of trust on their part towards her. These are very beautiful personal works that show the true soul of her subjects. I think I could have done without the "Sacrafice" portion of her work that shows a large scale goat killing in Mexico, but it was still some amazing photography. The problem with that place lies in how prickin' huge it is. I need to go back soon to catch the other two exhibits I wanted to check out.

Last night after a long two days of jetting around, it was time to veg and hit the hay early... now I could really use a weekend to just relax.

Burning Man 2007: Crude Awakening

The piece was called Crude Awakening and was created by Bay Area artists Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito. In its creation it utilized the talents of 8 different artists and enlisted the help of 180 different people. The image was quite striking. Set against the desolate space of the playa, you saw 8 metal sculptured human figures all made with a twisted mesh of scrap metal. Each sculpture had their own different participant-activated fire effects which I luckily got to play with. The statues were about 540 percent of the size of a normal human and were essentially praying to a 90 foot tall oil derrick. Some stood arms outstretched as if adoring their golden calf, some kneeling or crouched on the ground. All of the poses were based on the prayer posture of different religious traditions.




When I first saw the original sketch for this piece I was kind of underwhelmed, but that was because there was no concept of scale till I got to see it firsthand. Walking through the various figures, the statement was unmistakable and quite powerful. The world's worship of oil needs to stop, before it is too late. Adoring something and raising it to the level of a god is always the beginning of the end, and this was made perfectly clear at the burning of the piece on Saturday night.



We left the burning of the man as soon as his fiery corpse hit the ground and huffed it out to the oil derrick to get a good place to watch from. We were 3 people from the very front edge of the perimiter... we were as close as you could get. We were instructed to sit if we were in the first few rows since when the "big blast" went off, they didn't want us pannicking and causing a stampede. Later I could see why, a giant burst of flames turned into a mushroom cloud over our heads several hundred feet into the sky. It was probably the largest fireball I've ever seen and maybe ever will... unless I stand too close to a fuel tanker while smoking. The spectacle began with a big truck circling the piece and burning a thick cloud of fuel that created a toxic fog at ground level. That's when the WWII air raid sirens started to wail, and all I could see were the statue's arms reaching for the top of the oil derrick. After five minutes the haze started to clear and the most amazing fireworks show started. The plumes of sparks looked like giant oil spurts from the ground. The fireball and plume of fuel being shot into the center of the derrick burned it to the ground. It was absolutely stunning. The artists said the detonation of the piece apparently created 2.4 gigawatts of energy, which is enough to "power the entire Bay Area for one minute." Various figures have been claimed when it comes to how much fuel was used in the burn, the two most popular being 10,000 gallons of gasoline in 26 seconds, or 900 gallons of jet fuel and 2,000 gallons of liquid propane (I think that's the real amount myself) in about a minute and a half. Many have asked how this piece can be so anti-oil and utilize so much fuel to make its statement, but the artists received all the fuel from NASA as it was what they had deemed waste fuel. When it comes down to the figures, it was actually only a few ounces of fuel per person who attended the event. We as a group used more fuel getting to and from the event than this piece could ever burn if it had gone off hundreds of times.

THIS sounds amazing

Sometimes, Seattle really knows how to throw a party!

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=316770

Boys in the Band

Enumclaw, WA is a quaint little town nestled at the base of Mount Rainier, forty-five minutes South East of Seattle. It is a cow town with a smallish population of around eleven thousand tops. On Thursdays, they clean out the barns at the local dairies, hosing the manure water out through a system of drains. These drains lead to pipes that carry the water through a system of sprinklers out in the fields where it is sprayed through the air fertilizing the grass. Thursdays in my house was often called "Shit Day" as that is what all of Enumclaw smelled like on thursdays.

Enumclaw doesn't really like art, I do. Enumclaw likes sports. The EHS Hornets have been a strong football team for some time and the people of Enumclaw like it that way. Enumclaw for the most part is a set of flannel wearing, shit talkin', chaw spittin, bible thumpin', hard workin' hicks.

No kidding: Enumclaw in native american means "Land of the evil spirits." Sometimes it really lived up to that name.

Incidentally, I lived in Enumclaw, so typically this place mystified, terrified, and annoyed me.

Enumclaw has a small community of artists that live in and around the outskirts of the town, making their wares to sell at flea markets, or sell in small galleries. It also has an arts commission that is turning 25 years old this weekend.... This was news to me yesterday, as their presence when I was living there was little more than maybe a quilt show every two years. To commemorate their apparent 25 years of success, they chose to purchase a sculpture to place in front of city hall that expressed what Enumclaw was really about. They got a few bids from some local artists and instead of trying to make one of those designs happen, they bought a sculpture online that was a knock-off by a fake artist and sent from China. They got what they payed for..... a piece of crap and a Rockwell painting rip-off to boot....



What were they thinking ya ask? Well here's a quote from Gary LaTurner of the Enumclaw Art Commission: ["Our point was to buy something affordable that referenced the arts community in Enumclaw," said Gary LaTurner, Enumclaw's cultural-programs manager. "It's a very comfortable piece to look at. It's very user-friendly."] This quote alone was enough to earn an angry but constructive email to the Arts commission and the mayor of Enumclaw Washington.

I sent of an email expressing disappointment and concern at their choice of A. A piece of junk, and B. To not use a local artists work, who might better understand and express enumclaw in an artistic form. Last time I looked I don't remember that online sculpture catalog from China living in Enumclaw.

You'd think with a mission statement to: "...enrich the plateau area by coordinating and supporting literary, visual and performing artists and events, both amateur and professional." that they would have put more thought or effort into this. Whew it feels good to express anger constructively even though I am sure it fell on deaf ears over there. Like they care what the ex-token fag of the town thinks now that he lives in LA. I just hope that some day the artistic community there can grow and be supported by the so called "Enumclaw Arts Commission."

Beware the Ides of March

A brief definition from Wikipedia:

"Caesar summoned the Senate to meet in the Pompey's Theater on the Ides of March, 44 BC for the purpose of reading a petition, written by the senators, asking him to hand power back to the Senate. According to the Greek biographer Plutarch, a few days before, the soothsayer Titus Vestricius Spurinna apparently warned Caesar, "Beware the Ides of March." Caesar disregarded the warning:
"The following story, too, is told by many. A certain seer warned Caesar to be on his guard against a great peril on the day of the month of March which the Romans call the Ides; and when the day had come and Caesar was on his way to the senate-house, he greeted the seer with a jest and said: "Well, the Ides of March are come," and the seer said to him softly: "Ay, they are come, but they are not gone." [2]
As the Senate convened, Caesar was attacked and stabbed to death by a group of senators who called themselves the Liberatores ("Liberators"); they justified their action on the grounds that they committed tyrannicide, not murder, and were preserving the Republic from Caesar's alleged monarchical ambitions."

So in a bizarre drunken discussion a few months back, a few friends and I decided to have a gathering of sorts on the Ides of March. It seemed as good as any other day back in January. Tonight we will have our own "Salon." A few close friends will gather and share an artistic piece of themselves with the group. This can be anything from a poem, to video art, to a poem... No holds barred... The intent is to stand up and share, allowing each of us to maybe get to know each other better, as well as a fun excuse to hang out and do something artistic together. You must simply share something you have created, and maybe even something that has inspired you. Think of this as our pre-burningman, artistic dip in the pool.
As new agey as it sounds: perhaps this will empower us to overthrow our own personal dictator we have inside, and be a little more open and free with our artistic selves. Et tu Zacki?