I've been traveling a bit this last year. In the winter 2009, I drove across West Texas, to visit my parent in El Paso, the second safest city in the US, next to Juarez, Mexico, one of the most dangerous cities on the continent. All through the trip I was aware of the many totems of energy accross the landscape. Old wind mills that once pumped water. Giant Wind turbines. Oil pumps. Gas stations. And these days I spend a lot of time paying attention to the energy industry.

In El Paso there was snow on the mountains. I've found my self wondering about the choinces I've made in my life. I've been in mid-life crisis mode for about two years. But things have been going along fairly well. My jobs makes me travel enough to keep things interesting.

I've now seen the stars of the southern hemisphere. I saw the stars fo the Southern Cross, like in that song by Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young. I didn't think I would find my way to Brazil in this lifetime. And while staying in Rio de Janeiro, I got to peek in on the underbelly of the thriving metropolis rising out of lush green jungle.

I crossed the bridge to Niteroi, and visited the ports, shorebases and shipyard, buidling the next generation of state of the art electric powered workhorses.

And back in the states I toured the Gulf coast Through Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Fort Walton Beach, Florida. I went looking for workboat and oiled beaches. I found oil on the beaches of Gulfport, Mississippi. Not much, there crews in Hazmat suits on the beach picking most of it up. I had to run ahead of them to find enough to put in a sample jar. I'm not saying there wasn't oil on the coast, it was July 4 weekend, but I was limited to where my car could take me. I wanted a reminder of this envirmoental disaster. I've been collecting stones from different places I've been, and bringing them into work to talk about with our inhouse geologist. I do love geology. The industry is acutely aware of geology.

Goth Beauty Pageant February 2009

Numbers: Underwordl

2009 Goth Beauty Pageant

February 14th, 2009
The Goth Beauty Pageant took place October 14 at Numbers. The event drew a great assortment of characters. Though the number of female contestants this year seemed very small, about 8 women.

This years winners of Mr. and Mrs. Spooky was Phobia and Cyd Vicious. Phobia looked shockingly hansom with his heart protruding from his chest.

The Goth Beauty Pageant was mixed bag. The crowd was great, lot of flamboyant characters. The men competing were fierce and put on a great show.

The eight ladies competing for Ms. Spooky were rather lackluster. A far cry from the outrageous outfits I was expecting. One comment from the crowd refering to this contestant in green yelled out, "That girl isn't goth, thats just stripper." Then her fellow contestant to her right was in black, but very simple, not much of an effort. I may not be any kind of goth expert but I alway imagine a powerful presence and serious attention to detail from hair to accessories, boots, and a certian sence that she might kill you if you look at her cross. Please submit your comments on what you think is goth.

Phobia: this years Mr. Spooky 2009 did not disappoint.

This year’s winner for the night was our favorite freak: Phobia, the always glamorous, sometime DJ, and overall fashion God. He we see him on the right with Calla Doll, one of this years judges.


Ms. Spooky was taken by Cyd Vicious. I’m not sure she spells her name in some special unique way, but I didn’t like that she appropriated another artist’s name. I was disappointed in the lack of entries for Ms. Spooky, and perplexed by the lack of glamour, effort, or theatricality in the ladies entering the pageant.

I saw much more elaborate goth beauties at most underworld events. I’d heard this year would be stiff competition, and had heard of several girls who were coming out with very elaborate outfits. Cyd’s dress was beautifully crafted but I felt a lack of accessorizing and her make up seemed very minimal. Many of the contestants, boys and girls just didn’t come across as goth at all. It seemed that the really powerful goth women decided not to

enter this year.

Phobia was by no mean a disappointment, he definitely out shined his competition and the girls.

There were some tense moments when the final judging was going on. Down to the last three contestants for the men, and the crowd was cheering for their favorites. When they asked if you wanted Phobia to win I screamed and jumped up and down. Phobia was wearing platform boots, fishnet stockings, a black corset (clothing mostly by DareWare I think), bloody heart emerging from his chest, spiky hair, and splendid make up by Rabidgirlscout, one of the best photograhpers on the scene (seen here with Domina Shanon).

!!#!!#%*&#!*?*%*%*

This was a fantablulous event. Not to be missed next February. Mark your calendars and make plans to attend (assuming the apocalypse arrive before 2012).

New Gallery/After Party/CAM late night Puppets

January 17, 2009 Friday Openings:

Beam Me Up
Well fellow art sluts, I had an amazing night. Friday was my evneing to attend an opening at the New Gallery, a hoity after party, and the CAM puppet opening. I met many artists, a few patrons, some well behaved gallery owners, some collectors, a patron of the arts, an upstart museum curator (Toby Camps, with actual curiosity), is that why we call them curators? No, but curiosity should be a main trait for curators. It was a fun evening of wine and gallerinas (I prefer to regard them a minions to the art worlddemons.) These demons tend to be cruel task masters.

I’ve been lurking in the Houston art scene for many years now. Prowling about the galleries, drinking their wine and scoffing at the audacity of art dealers and curators alike. They act like they are the important people of the art world. They are mere stewards, caretakers. Dearler and curators (Gallerisits) should be regarded as servants to the work. But that not how it is. Galleriest rule the art world. Whoring out the artists, trying to shape their work to better fit the market. Market? They want contracts in blood. They want artists to be slaves to their single master. Art dealers are more like demons brokering deals for the artist's soul, hoping they die in time to send prices through the roof.

I spoke with artist Wendy Wagner. She's pretty tall and slim. She spoke in the voice of a little girl and my first reaction was not to like her. I talked to her about her paintings, and found myself being won ever by the substance of her work. Initially I was only looking at the superficial aspects of the paintings: one of those little old lady dogs, which normally drive me nuts. Wendy had the deck stacked against her in my mind. I was put off by the subject matter and was caught unprepared to be won over as she told me about her paintings. Wendy was very charming as she described the series of work as part of a narrative depicting her dog’s intergalactic travels. Visisting strange worlds and even stranger beings. Something flipped in my mind and I could see this little dog as heroic and adventurous visiting strange inter-dimensional worlds across the galaxy. I asked Wendy why she choose to paint this little dog so obsessively. She said she paints what she loves. How can you argue with this. I was able to see her little dog the way Wendy must feel about this subject matter, a real acomplishment and credit to the painter. The paintings are executed very skillfully, with a good mix of precise brush work and loose spontaneous gestures. The works are playful and full of color. I could easily imagine a narrative of the little white dog traveling among the stranger parts of the universe and finding acceptance and even understanding. I imagine the alien friends communicating with and appreciating a bold little earth dog free of any sense of alienation.

Punishing Beauty
Terry Thomas, I only saw three pieces by this artist but felt very moved. I grabbed Terry as she was leaving the gallery and exhorted her to speak with me about her work. She conceded and started by explaining that one of the pieces had been mislabeled. I found Terry to be some what tall slim and pretty. The images were created from beads and crystals. Reminiscent of Tibeten sand paintings of Mandalas. When asked why she would make such beautiful images of such horrific tortur devices, Terry spoke at length about the how beauty can be very punishing. Terry is new to the New Gallery and I’m looking forward to seeing her first exhibition with the gallery.

I spoke with Tom Andriola the particular demon in charge of The New Gallery. He reminds me of Diego Rivera, but slim and smiling. I’ve been going to The New Gallery for over ten years, and have usually found it to represent fairly strong art work. I put it too him (my question when I confront the Demons of the art worlds) how does it feel to be an arch-demon holding the keys to the art world? He laughed off my question (as demons often do) and said it wasn’t like that. He went on about being professional and loving art. Did I expect him to haul out a bloodstain contract? Tom came across as very affable and happy to talk about his artists. In the end, he called me out! inviting me to comeback without so many witnsses so that we could speak at lengnth. Perhaps we'll se an interview with Tom Andriola, assuming i survice the ordeal. Capturing demons in photos can be difficult, for some arcane reason demons appear fuzzy in photographs.

The Gallerinas/Minions were willowy thin, bright, pretty and helpful and very abundant in the New Gallery. These minions of the gallery serving wine, smile, talk up the artists and paintings and gernarly try to be helpful.

Later myself and some friends of mine manager to wrangle an invitation to the after party a block down the street at the palatial home of Jay Rusovich, full of interesting paintings and photographs. (No photos of the private home.) The after party was great. There I ran into one of Barbara Davis' artists, Joe Mancuso a real artist and long time veteran of the Houston art world. He seemed a little haggard and tired, like he’s been hard at work in his studio bring new work into the world. I was dying to write about our conversation, but felt it unfair divulge (gossip) about him after he was so genuine and open in speaking with me. I’m certain this encounter will make it into the book, but that will be a long time coming. Suffice to say I liked Mancuso and have admired his work for many years. It’s refreshing to run into whose main concern is their current art work.

Later I cruised on over the CAM for the late night puppet exhibition. I found it refreshing to find the CAM full of people close to 11pm on a Friday night. Much of the crowd was very young, still in high school with audio recording conducting interviews throughout the gallery.

Down stairs at the pay-bar I had a chance to talk with Toby Camps, you might remember him from the Evil panel some weeks before, he was the curator who remarked that the art world is a carnival with a casino attached. Toby was very friendly and happy to talk about the art world.

Dennis Oppenheim, Theme for a Major Hit, 1974

I recomend visiting the New Gallery, 2639 Colquitt St. Houston, Tx 77098, as well as the exhibition at the CAM, 5216 Montrose Blvd. Houston, Texas 77006.

ArtCrawl Notables 2008

ArtCrawl Run Through
When I go to ArtCrawl I want to feel like I’ve wandered in to the workshop of the mad toymaker. I want to see work in progress, works to be, and piles of completed or near finished work. I want to be overwhelmed by the shear volume of your creative voice.

One of the first places I visited was Superstitious Studio hosting the work of Stacey Gillan and Tish Balli.

The great thing about ArtCrawl is that you get to walk into working studio, and presumably walking into the lives of innumerable Houston artists. And I don’t want to see a cleaned up studio where there is only a few piece on mostly blank walls. I want to see lots of works of art, cluttering the work space with brushes or whatever tools you use. I want to see stacks and piles of art, so many you don’t have room to hang them all properly. This is a good descriptions of Supersticious Studio, home of painter Tish Balli

I have taken a while to write up my notes from my trip through ArtCrawl 2008. I felt very let down by Commerce Street Arts Warehouse Studios (CSAW), or what we use to call CSAW. Back around the turn of the century it use to be a real romp through the studios of working artists, or maybe I mean working studios. CSAW use to feel like you were walking into the living room of struggling artists. There was a powerful vibrancy to CSAW that I miss. Now it looks like a bunch of empty spaces loaned out to the artists for the day. It has the dryness of a low grade art gallery. I don’t mean to disrespect the artists who showed at CSAW this year. I’ll get to them later.

Kia Gardner’s work space was one of the CSAW spaces that stood out in my memory.

Jennifer Madeley Dunn of Mother Dog Studios.

Mitch Samuels is another artist that stood out. Mitch works with a lot of bright colors and bold totemic images. His work reminded me of the kind of paintings a very sophisticated stylish caveman might have created if he’d had access to the same bright colors and canvas. Mitch’s space suffered from having been cleaned up too much, one could tell this was his working studio, but he’d done too good a job of cleaning up the messiness of art I live to see in working studios.

I know missed some names, but I have photos and if you can help me identify some of the artist mentioned above, or if I’ve miss identified anyone please contact me, and I’ll correct the blog. And fill in a caption on your work. Please don’t email any hate mail, HAVE the decency to comment here in the blog so everyone can hear your rebuttal or brutal attack.

Working on these paintings

The idea that artists shouldn't write art criticism is retarded. It’s up there with the idea that we don’t want professional politicians, but idiots we can better relate to. The entry is a kind full disclosure of my bias. This is to show you, my few readers how I approach art. The following is a running list of ideas I’ve been working on in my own paintings, from the last several years.

Luminous Visions Scrawled across the inside of my forehead
Indra’s Net
250million years ago Permian Extinction
Campsites are notorious for no phone
Make room for the new
I hate the way people revere New York as if it were the only place to live or expericnce life, as if the rest of the country didn’t count
Elsewhere with Strangers
Art is also its own Reason
13 Points of Communication
Mirror Neurons-Empathy
Built in Obsolescence
Golden Ratio Mandala
Fishing in the Unconscious
Galactic Suburbs
Ragged Cascade of Synapses’
Paracryptology
Sheaf of Bliss/Sheaf of Wisdom
Wisdom Body
TaskForce 626
Animal Track >>>Symbolic Language
50,000 man tracked animals
Imaginary time vs. Real time
Safe Deposit Box of Darkness
Wall of Weariness
Burning Bush
Worship/whorship
La Novia de Matisse, Manuel Vincent
Parmenidies
2000 Generation
Importance of Myths
Simulacra & Artifice
Africa
10 people populated the Americas
Pattern of mini ice ages, 1500 years
Laws of Thermodynamics
Myth of My People; Spanish, Portuguese, Mexican, French, Apache, Human
Pride Fear Temptation Ignorance Desire
Fetters
Where is the place to be now?
800,000 Million Heartbeats
Worlds Drowning in Sand
Documentaries about fighting nature
Holding Pattern
Sexual Compulsion
Program Error
Time dilation
Stone Tools, stone circles
Useless objects that create useful relationships
Art
Symbolic Imagination
Stone Age Internet
Homo sapiens exchange ideas
20,000 years ago the clans of Neanderthals held out in Spain
Modern Humans defined by art
Galactic Pucker in a void
Species leaving the spinning particle
Smaller plate is the answer
Dimple in Space
Cosmic Spasm
Neutron Star
Frame Independent Laws
Frame Independent Properties
Frame Dependent Matrix of Luminous Message
Evidence X X X
Unwillingness to Remember
Pen-opticon
What is a matrix?
Beautiful Dreamer
Chaotic Space
Trimetric Fracture
Spooky action at a distance
Uncertainty Principle
Storlinger’s Cat
Dinosaurs
What is a spire?
How to engage the Processing
Power of the Brain or of the Planet
Adaptability is Paramount Personal Propaganda
Waiting at the window of ever was.
Tending the light at the End of the Tunnel
Fullest possible use as a human
Slit scans
Create Six in-submersibles, chunks
God Perspective
Dust Devil, Cyclone, Tornadoes
Parallel Possessing
$200,000.00 a year makes the girls wet corporate slave and passive aggressive politics
Master cylinder
Shearing Away
China
Arc Trajectory
United States as a metaphor for Heaven, as the city of spires
Painting without Optical Aids
Painting with Optical distortion
Art world politics
Evil=Fame
Color field for the people.
How to generate revenues
Goal is more canvas and studio space, not money.
Speciation: Mammals, Reptiles, Birds, Insects, Fish
Mass of Lobsters ¥
Countries that sanction Torture: USA, China, Egypt
Army Men
Uranium Tipped Ordinance
Proto-culture
Soft Wall
28 256 Set If Off
Personal Pantone
Proto-language
Right Handedness
Remember, you have chosen to perceive this universe, if you find you don’t like it, change your mind.
Look up the family line
What Happened to the great Herds
Hubble Telescope
Postcards out of my mind.
Black Hole Painting
III Big Ass Series, 2’x3’ 20 canvas per series, 60 plus total
Rockeaters
The Means and The Ends
Spiraling Staircase
Turn Studio Into Dexter’s Laboratory
Fortune Cookie Pages
OpArt: You Are Here.
The Interzones
Take that manacle off your wrist.
Make more pieces for you.
Make the paintings that you want.
Pyramid Fields of Nubia
xTheta Writing"!?*)(.”
Blowjob Paintings
Banned Books
Jung’s Sea
Aurora Borealis
Norway Sun spiral
Twisting Pillars
Anvil Cloud
Crepuscular rays or Jacob’s Ladder
New Babylon
Walled City
Ten lost tribes of Israel
What is Babylon?
It may be more a state of mind than a geographic place or maybe a very old archetype***
Work out a system.
What is cyberpunk?
Hacking the Establishment
What is Hacking?
Getting at the power that be
The computer allows the individual to reach back into the world and monkey around
Conservation Laws Constrain Interaction
The Laws of Physics Are Universal
The Laws of Physics Are Frame-Independent
Electric and Magnetic Fields Are Unified
Particles Behave Like Wave
Some Processes are Irreversible
Universe
Death
Six of эφŧ▼♥
Hermit
Magigian
Lovers
Relax, relish the cherry of Life
What is Russet? Brown
Frame Dependent Matrix of Luminous Messages!
Water Wars
Great Lake Authority
Local Militia
Severe Oil Shortages
Campact Broken
Aggro Energy
Water Shortages near salted shores
Water Provinces
Rebell separatist Insurgents Militia terrorists Activists,
Homicidal ideation
IED’s RPGs Words we need to add to dictionary

Aberdeen Art Gallery

Just off the North Sea, November 2, 2008: I visited the Aberdeen Art Gallery which is the main museum for art in the city. For a public museum I found the collection to be full of energy and vigor, especially the collection of older paintings. Lots of rough brush work among the Scottish painters of the last century. The Aberdeen Art Gallery boasts some choice masters, very interesting paintings by Monet and Dega. I had never seen these paintings in any books. One of my favorite paintings from the portrait gallery was the Gypsy Queen of Seville 1852, La Perlade Triana by John Phillip.

There was one sculptural piece that I found especially mind blowing to find in the northern cold foggy haunts of Great Britain. I was astounded to find a large sculpture of a Harajuku Teenager standing in the middle of the main gallery. Kenny Hunter’s Feedback Loop 2003 is an amazing work. To begin with it’s a beautiful sculpture. At first glance it looks like it’s made from feint gray plastic. Its actually glass reinforced plastic. The piece is a Japanese teenager from the streets of Harajuku, Tokyo, defiantly holding up her fist clutching a bouquet of pink flowers. About her waste she has an assortment of modern accoutrements, some more easily identifiable. Mp3 player, iconic Japanese doll and bags. My first thoughts cast her as young cyberpunk rebel fighting the authoritarian establishment that seems to constantly demand mass submission. I felt very emotional looking at that sculpture. And especially in the cold north of Scotland which I had not anticipated would appreciate a work of such subtly and beauty. I feel like this piece express so much of the rebelliousness and ambivalence about churned up by modern life.

Another piece that stood out was Ken Currie’s Gallowgate Lard. This painting is very spooky and beautiful. A ghastly image that looks dead alive. The Aberdeen Art Gallery is full of many amazing paintings. It was refreshing and surprising to find so much great art. Aberdeen has a lot to see if you make the effort, and stop listening to people tell you to get on a bus to Edinburgh. Aberdeen is a beautiful granite city.