Yesterday, a $105 trip to the doctor where they told me something I already knew thanks to Kim W. Wolfe, MD.

Today, being questioned by 3 police officers shortly after 7:15 pm because someone reported a suspicious person in a car taking pictures.

Tomorrow, head to Providence, Rhode Island where I'll help install Liz King's show at Brown University.

The day after that?

Brad on RedFizz

That's right Brad will be on RedFizz (as Curtain Rod Character) this Saturday.
Check it out...

A Real Maverick

Please Translate

My friend Arlen and I are learning this on accordion but we aren't working on a German preamble. Perhaps we should be.

Monday Take

I went trolling for images after work today.

First I found this:

























Then, a mile or so later I saw this (pictures are generally upside down when I find them) and thought pay dirt:


















And then I flipped it over:


















Serves me right, really.

Alyssa C Salomon Equivalence, 2006. Cyanotype Print

See this it's new: www.alyssasalomon.com

(nearly) Speechless

I saw a full size version of this poster at the post office today. Is the FCC serious about this design? It was all I could do not to steal it off the side of the front counter.

Land of the Lost hasn't been on TV for a long time...

In Other News

1. Kim and I have been as we are for six years and that's pretty dern great.
2. Sweet, sweet George has moved to Prague. I miss him and know I'm not alone.
3. I am employed again-- this time at VCU's Anderson Gallery. I'm the Gallery Associate-- 28 hours a week of doing interesting things and my boss is boss!
4. I am also teaching photo this fall at VCU- 2 classes of intro.
5. Le Primitifs du Futur has 2 CD's that I didn't know about that I now know about.
6. I am getting better at the ukulele and do a mean version of The Titanic Disaster.
7. We will be in DC this weekend visiting my family and it should be-- will include a trip to the Hirshorn.

There's more, I'm sure.

From the Outside

It's funny to think of how slowly I post... why do I have high speed internet?

First Few Days

Obviously my plan to post daily didn't work out. Between working long days, excellent conversations over meals, and the mandatory minimum of two beers per night at a bar, I just never got around to finding the time. So here you go- I'm back in Richmond and will dole these out over the next couple of days...


On Sunday we were let in to the Sheldon at noon and began planning... this is one of three galleries and would be the "studio" portion of the show.


This is the innermost gallery and was used for sculptures and video. When we arrived two walls had been built in the space. There were 115 crates and boxes for us to unpack...


This is the outermost gallery and is entered from the Great Hall (as Johnson named it). It would contain sculptures and photographs.


On Monday we had our bearings and began installing work in earnest-- here Liz and Alison work on The Sizes of Things in the Mind's Eye.

Here they are in the outermost gallery working on Pupil. Each sculpture's pose changes from show to show.



Here Liz works on lighting for an untitled sculpture. Many of the pieces are lit from with in by fiber optic cables but still require quite a bit of treatment from other lights.

Day Five

And again from Nebraska, this time writing from a coffee shop in the Haymarket district called The Mill. All the youngsters in Lincoln are so clean and good looking. So far I've only spotted one hair cut heavily influenced by Conor Oberst. I'm sure there are others but I wouldn't know as I haven't seen a picture of him in awhile.

The installation of Liz's show is going well. We're working long days and I'll eventually post some images from the gallery but for tonight here's a very abbreviated walk around a small part of town.

Neihardt Hall, the dorm we're staying in (supposedly the most sought after b/c of it's governing council and proximity to Love Library) has a sun room.

The city, which is relatively small and tidy is full of buildings that were retrofitted w/ international style (?) facades. Lots of pieces of buildings that look like they are made out of marshmallow or covered in flaked coconut. Also lots of public sculpture that looks communist. I'll post more of this soon, it's no small thing.

It's not just the outside of the buildings that are cool. This is a gyro place that we ducked into for water (well, I got water).

The University of Nebraska Lincoln has an impressive sculpture collection scattered throughout a bucolic campus (Warren Buffet and Johnny Carson are alums). This stone Michael Heizer piece is really long and kind of canoe shaped. Lots of bird poo on the top ledge of it.

A "small" Richard Serra piece. That's Alison and Sean.

A really cool Roxy Paine piece (it's made of stainless steel). Its better than the one Kim and I saw in Seattle-- lots of broken limbs and even some fungus. Very tough to photograph-- especially when you don't try that hard.

There's also a lot of civic sculpture throughout the city commemorating all there is to commemorate. This low relief was made of cast brick and is down by the train depot and the tracks (which we've affectionately dubbed the river b/c it feels like there should be water where the train tracks are but there's not).

I really like the lights on the campus. Most are askew and look like giant map pins dotting the landscape.

A Little Something

We've been working 12 hour days and it's not too easy to find time to post, but here's a view from a parking garage I took last night at 9:45pm.

Live from Lincoln

I'm in Nebraska for two weeks helping install Liz King's retrospective at the Sheldon Museum of Art in Lincoln. I'm staying in a small dorm room with Liz's assistant Sean. Allison, a student at RISD and a family friend of Liz's is up on the third floor. Liz is staying at the Holiday Inn a few blocks away.

So far so good. Without the students around Lincoln appears to be a sleepy town. Then again, this may be an unfair assessment as it's the weekend, we're in the states Capitol and a couple of days ago was a holiday.

The Sheldon was designed by Philip Johnson (and slightly resembles Lincoln Center) , the state Capitol building is the second tallest in the nation (after Louisiana's), and there are lots of catalpas and Chinese rain trees. Pretty good so far.

Of Course You Have Better Things To Do!

Year two of SAMETIME 7:15 is six months awesome.

Kim and I were thinking about moving to the f-a-n so she would be closer to V-C-U when school starts in the f-a-l-l (she's going for a museum studies p-r-o-g-r-a-m). After much hemming and hawing, and oh-so mature thinkings about our finances (or lack thereof) we've decided against it. So, in order to feel like there has been some kind of change we rearranged our rooms (we are proud separate roomers). It's exciting and we've both made out like bandits (although we have pretty different ideas of what this looks like).

I say all of this because my change involved an aparatus that came with these instructions. Based of this strange and beautiful instruction sheet can you guess what this aparatus is?

The first reader to guess will get a SAMETIME 7:15 button mailed to the location of their choosing. People who email Kim on a daily basis, or talked to me from their apartment in Philadelphia this afternoon are restricted from participating in this thrilling competition (and probably already have a button).

PS - My friend Robert turned me onto Teddy & Marge. They are fantastic-- from Austin (maybe that place hasn't gone the way of the Gap?), lots of organ (sounds like an actual church organ), cello, and accordion. They play wacky versions of 30's and 40's standards and don't try to sing like Mariah Carey (or somebody else who can sing too well).

what a stupid face you have here mklease!

I've been getting these emails in my junk mail lately. Funny and awfully tempting...

How it Went

I'm a part of the show Multiplicitocracy at American University's Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in DC. Super person Kendall Ladd curated me into the show that was organized by students of AU's Arts Management program.





The show will be up through July 27, hope you get a chance to see it.

Older Michael Writes About Younger Michael

The puff balls of the few cottonwood trees in Richmond are blowing around and reminding of my years living in Fort Collins, Colorado. I had never lived near a river before and loved the Cache La Poudre river which runs through the north part of town and through Lee Martinez Park. During the summer months a young Annabelle (and a younger Michael) would walk, run, jump, and lay around the park. She would run in the long grasses that were alongside the trail, occasionally popping her head up above the tops of the blades to make sure that I was still close by.

A sweet one, that dog.

AND HERE'S ANOTHER...

Has anyone assembled a list of all the people* doing year long web projects? Here are the three I pay attention to and a shameless plug of my own:

Skull-A-Day

Skull-A-Day is the work of Noah Scalin, a fellow Richmonder, designer and seemingly all around conscious and fascinating guy. I started paying attention to him a few years ago when he and Christopher Humes began another year based project called Swords into Plowshares. We met last summer at the Art-O-Mat ten year anniversary. He's a busy fellow, follow the links and you'll find Another Limited Rebellion, his "socially conscious graphic design firm". They also maintain a great blog.


will.love.logic


will.love.logic is the blog of New York artist Elin Waterson. I also met Elin at the Art-O-Mat event last summer and she has committed to making a block print everyday for all of 2008. She's had some time to focus on different themes and is currently making prints of mythical beings. All of her prints are really pretty amazing... you can go here to see a post where she grouped them by months to see a bunch at once. I don't know Elin well, but by the looks of it she can do most things very well and may be the biggest Old 97's fan to have ever existed.

Aesthetic to Ascetic

This project is brand new and by Kristin Kaskey, a fashion designer, prof at VCU and artist who also lives in Richmond. From her first blog post: starting on may 12th i will wear each item currently in my possession once before any garment can be re-worn... my preliminary count looks like i can make it 306 days without repeating a dress, sweater, top or fitted jacket. skirts and pants will be worn once then will be allowed to re-enter the rotation since i have considerably fewer of these items... each day i will post a photo of the look of the day. at the end of each day garments will be tagged and stored for exhibition, re-fashioning and sale/giveaway.


SAMETIME 7:15


I'll keep the shameless plug to a minimum but I am happy to report that SAMETIME 7:15 will be included in the exhibit Multiplicitocracy which opens at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in DC May 31.

More to come about that in a few days...

Happy May Day

I'm pretending that I wasn't the only one out there that didn't work today and that all of you spent the day in the sun, talking, eating good food, playing music, and letting the ways of Spring have its way with you and her, and him, and them...

SATURDAY WORKSLOP

I taught a silhouette-wheatpaste workshop Saturday to a bunch of kids who are a part of VACR's Young Artist Society. This is the same group I taught a little over a year ago.

We wrote a bunch of exquisite corpse poems and then set about illustrating them, making silhouettes, and pasting them onto the side of Paradise Garage on Main Street in Richmond.

It was a great day and if I was a super blogger (and teacher) I would have made sure I knew the poems they illustrated and would have put them under each picture BUT THAT'S JUST A LITTLE TOO MUCH WORK.