Julekalender is Back!

After all well-meaning intentions to get back to regular blogging and making work go out the window, an artist tends to go back to the well of familiarity. In my case, in December, it's the well of the Julekalender, a series of drawings I did back in 2010.

I've reignited the Julekalender idea and have begun drawings for each day in December. On display in this blog post is the drawing from December 1st. It's titled "Piles of Mashed Potatoes in the Shape of the Pillars of Creation," and its inspiration is a Thanksgiving staple and one of the most famous outer space photographs ever taken.

I am hoping that this year's series of drawings will work as a cohesive group, as opposed to the whimsy and randomness of the 2010 drawings. That's not to say that all of the images will feature food or space as subject matter, but you never know.

Shopping Carts

Here's what happens in the summer when you're working on a ridiculously extensive* basement remodel: you struggle to find time to make work.

In the face of a stagnant summer in the studio (mostly because it's full of furniture and tchotchkes belonging to the portion of the basement under remodel), I discovered that I could come up with ideas and make work in the strangest of places and at the strangest of times.

Enter the shopping cart project.

Earlier this year, our local Safeway put number stickers on all of its shopping carts. Why? Perhaps it's a way of tracking their carts in case they are stolen by pesky college students. ("Dude, let's ride this thing!") Or perhaps it's how they identify carts that wind up in the Safeway cart repair garage. ("Cart 85 needs a lube job on its front passenger wheel.")

Whatever the reason, each time I went to Safeway, I pulled out my phone and photographed the labels of the carts I was using.

There's no rhyme or reason to the motivation for this "project." For the moment it means very little. But I happened to stockpile a couple dozen images from which to draw from or find inspiration. Or maybe I'll craft the project into something larger once the basement is complete.

Either way, the challenge of creating images within a busy schedule—not to mention creating interesting images from nearly the same compositional perspective in every shot—was a welcome, if temporary, replacement to the challenges encountered when rewiring, hanging drywall, or installing an egress window.

* By "ridiculously extensive," I mean it's a lot of work because you're going the cheap route and doing it all yourself. For the pros, this the whole thing would've been a six-day job.

From Digital to Physical

With every passing year and an increasing amount of publications that discuss humanity's transition and total immersion in the digital realm, I long for the days in the future where we move away from the hyperspecific, hyperreal arena of the digital domain and back to physical reality.

Perhaps this will occur as a trend that becomes "hip" among a select few. As a meme, notions of physical reality will reappear as some folks choose to "tune out" or go back to the "retro" days of physical media and property. Compact discs will come back, stores will stock them and people will buy them. They'll be the hip thing like the vinyl resurgence—that started in 2008 or so—was (and still is, to some extent). People will write letters. (Perhaps even the postal service will make money again.)

This retro impulse will leave us all more focused on one thing at a time. Instead of streaming video while ordering pizza while Facetiming while Facebooking while tweeting, we might actually live in actual moments. We'll focus more on the things around us. We'll see leaves fall to the ground. We'll feel the booklet that came with the album. We'll see art in person instead of looking at virtual museums online.

And, in this future, we'll be open to more of the world around us because the physical world allows for more distraction rather than less.

We'll become better. We'll become smarter.

Belongings: A Story About Amy Winehouse

I came to know about Amy Winehouse the way any knowledge-lacking music fan would—by proxy. Someone, somewhere had said or read or reread something about the (at the time) up-and-coming Brit-pop-soul singer and a song that might—should the circumstances be right—become popular and/or famous.

So, amid a respite from graduate school—in the summer of 2007—back home at my parents' house, I happened to first see the video for Winehouse's "Rehab." There, in mom and dad's family room, me in a chair and Amy on a couch inside the television, I knew it was her. My instinct told me, in the face of my knowledge-lacking musical fandom—long removed from the days I lived and breathed music—noodling guitarist and evolving cynic I was and perhaps still am—and with that my strange connection with Amy Winehouse began.

Grad school, at the time, was a mess, that summer between semesters. I lacked direction, lacked craft, and lacked any sort of love life. Not yet set in my ways that would lead to my eventual MFA thesis, I ventured into areas of art quite unknown to me, leading—long story short—to my dragging an artificial lighting kit to my apartment on a late summer evening, in an effort better my technique, to enable my elevated distinction in some way. Dare I say it: to become a better photographer. That stupid plastic army battle tank case of lights, bulbs, and cables, still giving me a crink in my shoulder to this day as I think and write. I hated it. I hated what it contained.

This all occurred the summer I had moved away from family and was truly living alone. My isolation, in retrospect, was higher than ever—perhaps leading to my increased creativity and productivity—and I relied on the web (Internet) to reach out to others. I transitioned from public to private, from physical to virtual, and the night I lugged a bomb shelter case of strobes to my apartment happened to be night I bought my first digital music download.

I don't know exactly why I felt like buying digital music at the time, with those strobes in their black Kevlar case staring at me. And I don't exactly remember why I had never previously purchased a digital album at all. But until that point my digital music collection—already, even in 2007, becoming less personal and more stoic than ever—consisted solely of burned copies of every CD I owned and a random assortment of illegally downloaded Napter music from freshman year of college.

Even amid reservation to becoming a little "like everyone else" I decided the first album I'd ever download from iTunes would be Back to Black by Amy Winehouse. And I listened to the thing—though to this day, music that exists only in digital form still doesn't feel like a "thing" to me—and enjoyed it, all while getting nowhere with those artificial lights, the artifice of the the digital album booming in the night.

As I left behind the last remains of music as a physical medium I lost myself in those lights. And it was terrible. The lights, not the music. Neo-doowop-soul pouring from my meager computer stereo speakers, and I was awash in technical conundrums in my brain. Do I change this switch here? Does this setting change there? Why are these images so dark, what speed syncs with this equipment? Though I've since figured out how to use light kits like the one I danced with that night, the thought of that evening still makes me anxious.

It was strange new circumstances, indeed, in the way Back to Black came into my life. From Amy on the video couch on MTV2 to the night I played with strobes to no avail.

Jump to four years later, again it's the summer, with everything about my life wildly different, and I am on the verge of embarking onan entirely new chapter of existence. There's twenty-six feet of belongings behind me, and our moving truck is lurching at a snail's pace up the winding embankments of Interstate 84 known as Cabbage Hill. I have several years of memories with me amidst the struggles of the diesel engine.

The truck is part of my future wife-to-be's great migration eastward to be with me and start our life together as homeowners; we're moving. Picking up and going somewhere else. In a day's time we'll be sipping beer and eating pizza (and, frankly, when does pizza taste better than after a big move?) having transported her belongings from her place and mine from mine, all into our new place.

As we wind our way around Cabbage Hill, a story comes on the radio about the death of Amy Winehouse. I'm struck by this in a way that still stands with me, curious and cold, buffeted by the hauling of six tons of baggage up the hill with me, Amy's baggage released by her death and mine gaining altitude in the back of a rental truck. Emotionally, it felt as though I was pulling a case of lighting equipment up Cabbage Hill, more than two thousand miles removed from that Michigan digital summer night.

The boys in the truck with me, our sons, were curious and wanted to know who she was.

"She was a singer," I said. "And she was pretty wild, and she...well, she died." Assuming it was determined to be by her own hand. Assuming the impending well-known tragedy to be a part of our narratives. For slight shifts in either's veracity might have altered my response to them, these boys, not yet a third of twenty-seven, so far removed from the pains and troubles of others, just asking an innocent question.

Amy Winehouse rose and fell a few times in my life, quite briefly, the way mythical figures often do. Back to Black doesn't get regular play these days, but sometimes "Me and Mr. Jones" comes on, and I can't help but think of those three times in my life where Amy Winhouse actually meant something to me.

Revamp

I started out 2013 with the goal of completing a piece of work every week. Life quickly took over, and I was teaching online, chairing a department, serving on a search committee, and dealing with my school's budget issues.

But I've had some artistic success this year despite the busy life. In April, I was lucky enough to show in curator TJ Norris' Off the Plain exhibition in Portland. Following that was a solo installation in the Portland Building downtownin August. And in September I received word that my work will be featured in an exhibition in Estonia next summer.

I'm in the process of updating my website, putting process images up on my new artist page on Facebook, and polishing up a new—in-progress—body of work for exhibition opportunities.

Stay tuned.

Saying Goodbye to John Hubbard

I had an idea for a project way back in 2007. I was approaching my final year of the MFA program at Kendall College of Art and Design, and I had an idea that was going to require effort beyond anything I had ever applied to a photography project.

I was going to fake images of a presidential campaign. Make it fit within the context of the real campaign, and try to make the whole thing look as real as possible.

I began with fake names, fake political parties, fictional stories about these characters who, as third party candidates, stood no chance at winning anything other than a few fringe supporters.

The first person I contacted was Gary Morrison. I found him through the networking settings on MySpace (area: theater, location: Grand Rapids, age: 50+) and emailed him about the project. We exchanged numbers, and it took one phone call for him to say, "I'm interested. I'll do it." At our first meeting, where I posed him in front of an American flag, I asked him why he was willing to help me out. "You've got an interesting project, and it sounds like you need someone to commit to it."

That's the kind of guy I discovered Gary was. He was dedicated. He became John Hubbard throughout 2008, meeting folks, handing out buttons, doing photo shoots, and giving speeches. Gary became a quasi-celebrity during that time in Grand Rapids, recognizable due to his physique (he was a world-record-holding bodybuilder at 65), high-ish pitched New Hampshire accent, and his proclivity to play darts with his wife at Founders on a regular basis.

After I moved to Oregon, Hubbard, of course, lived on in the work from Nobody Wins. I reconnected with Gary in early 2012 after the three year anniversary of the exhibition. Later that year, I found out Gary had cancer and I wrote to wish him the best. He wrote back, saying that it looked like I had staked out a good path in life. He had recently lost a friend who also had an MFA in photography. "It is a reminder to me," Gary wrote, "that for the most part we are in charge of our own destinies. Stay in charge." 

Gary lost his battle with lung cancer on Monday. He is part of the reason I am where I am, doing what I love to do. His dedication to my project helped me see it through to the end, and Gary was as determined with my work as he was with his own. 

Unlike John Hubbard, Gary was — and still is — very real to me when I look at his images and think about the time we spent together. He came to my going away party in Grand Rapids before I moved far away. He kept in touch. He continued to relish the thought that he had run for president, and when a friend asked him for one of his Hubbard lawn signs, he refused to give it up, keeping it at his home because "I consider it a national treasure."

The real treasure, for me, was being able to work with a guy like Gary. And everyone who got to know him through the Hubbard campaign will agree with me when I say he'll be dearly missed. 

Is Verizon Making Us Meme Machines?

Every two years or so, I get an email from Verizon—my mobile phone service provider—saying it's time to upgrade my device. Normally, like when I had my first Nokia phone ten years ago, I jump at the chance, drop into the store, and pick up a new phone.

Two years ago when that deadline appeared, however, I upgraded to an iPhone, so when the time came to upgrade again, I declined. The phone works great, helps me stay connected to my job, keeps me entertained, that sort of thing. I didn't have any reason to change.

My wife is on the cell phone plan too, and this time she wanted an upgrade (on her phone, not her husband). So, after much harangue from the Verizon clerk to get this or that with this screen protector and that case and this charger and this belt strap carrier and the like, she went with her first choice: a free iPhone 4 with no case, no carrier, no screen protectors, nothing.

Then things got interesting, but not in a telecommunications-type way. It turns out that we had been on a grandfathered calling plan, capping our calls at 700 minutes a month and allowing us only (only!) 250 texts each. Verizon doesn't have those plans any more, and we were forced to switch due to the upgrade.

In the end, the change saves us money. But upon further investigation of what we signed up for, some interesting details appeared.

Gone are the days of choosing a cell phone plan with a certain number of available talking minutes. We're no longer limited to 700 minutes, or 450 minutes, or 10,000 minutes; we can now talk to whoever we want for however long we like. And we're not limited in our texting either. Sure, iPhone to iPhone texts don't count for anything, but our new plan allows us to text anyone as much as we like, and our charges stay the same.

Now, though, our data is capped. This, on the surface, isn't a problem for either of us. We regularly use less than .5 gigabytes with both of our phones combined. But capped data—and the rest of Verizon's new plans—reveal something very interesting about how we communicate.

They are encouraging us to spread our ideas.

If you subscribe to the philosophical beliefs of someone like Susan Blackmore, we've evolved to be carriers for cultural genetics. We have evolved as a species to pass along cultural information in the form of memes. Not only that, but memes have FORCED our hand to evolve into better meme-spreaders. So, years and years ago, we developed language, not to be able to tell each other what to do, but to be better able to transmit memes to one another.

The modern digital age, according to memeticists like Blackmore, exists for that reason. Cell phones, the Internet, television, and radio, all exist so that we can pass information along to one another. Memes rule us and our technologies. Ideas, dance moves, songs, jokes, fashion trends, all have their root in our lives as  memes, existing only to be spread from person to person. (Do we really need "Gangnam Style" to exist as a species? How about iPods? Color-coordinated sneakers?)

Verizon's new Share Everything plans blow that "secret"—that modern technology exists not to benefit us, but to benefit the transmission of memes—wide open. Verizon is banking on increasingly fast transmission times, larger phone screens, and the ability to talk or text anyone, anywhere, wherever and tying those capabilities into our natural tendencies—and the driving forces of the memes that surround us—to want to gab to each other about new things, new ideas, new memes. Sometimes we gab about existing memes that get a second wind because of vehicles like the Internet (would Rick Astley still be a cultural phenomenon if it weren't for the Internet in 2005?).

The cap isn't on a specific mode of communication. Now it's all lumped together into the catchall category of "DATA." It's all bits of information, not words or letters or emails or video. It's all just information, and we can send and receive as much as we like, provided we don't go over our cap. And if we do? We just pay a little bit more.

Even the handle of "Share Everything" indicates what is behind Verizon's plan structure changes. If you've got something to say, sing, post, write, or draw, you should do it. They have the bandwidth to let you do it.

The memes have forced our hands, and the large telecommunications firms have obliged them. This isn't necessarily a detrimental thing as far as our society at large is concerned; it's just that it's terribly revealing to see evidence of humanity's memeplex in your run-of-the-mill cell phone bill.

Election 2012: The End of the Universe

With the election now just twenty-four hours behind us, a cursory glance at Facebook, Twitter, or national news outlets reveals one thing: because of what happened last night, we are edging closer to the end of the universe.

It's not America that's dying. It's not the destruction of Liberty. The election didn't usher in a dark day for the country; within the next four years, the universe—everything as we know it, as well as everything we don't know and cannot possibly comprehend—will cease to exist.

Before November 8th, 2016, everything will go away. And we won't even know that it's happened. The universe will disappear, and it will take Democrats and Republicans, pundits and laypeople with it. Maybe it will all be one big implosion. Or maybe a fire will ignite from somewhere light years away and blow everything apart.

Whatever it is, by the time we hit November in four years, nothing will be here. And it's apparently all our fault.

Oops.

SPE Northwest - Eugene, OR

For me, November means dropping everything for a weekend and heading to the Northwest Region of the Society for Photographic Education's annual conference. The various regions in the country hold annual conferences for artists, theorists, educators, and students to present their work and ideas, and there are opportunities to have portfolios reviewed, rub shoulders with the heavy hitters in photography, that sort of thing.

This year, the University of Oregon hosted the conference down in Eugene. Though the trip was a long one, it was well worth it. I presented the images and theories behind the UFCK photo project—which, after discussions with and encouragement from colleagues, I've decided to press on and continue—and the work was met with many positive questions and responses. It was a good feeling, especially in the face of the head cold I was getting over. 

This year's lineup of presenters and panels was the most solid since I started attending SPENW when I moved to Oregon in 2009. Amjad Faur addressed the current state of contemporary Arab photography, and Justyna Badach showcased her Bachelor Portraits series—and what stood out most to me was her process similar to the way in which I worked for the UFCK photos. Ted Hiebert spoke about the psychic photography of Ted Serios, and Hiebert works with his beginning photography students in psychic experimentation in order to address the tension between information and imagination within the medium. 

Southern Oregon University's Erik Palmer (follow him on Twitter! He commands it!) concentrated an entire talk on social networking and social media, and how these new avenues of connecting allow a photographer to reach a large audience much more easily in the past. He stressed that this is an important paradigm shift in how we teach students, and he also might have mentioned that everything we're doing now is probably not ideal, and we should completely overhaul how we teach photography curriculum. 

Mary Goodwin's presentation about Minor White was hilarious, frightening, and uplifting. If I could get just one student to stare at a photograph for a half hour before responding to it, it'd be an accomplishment no matter what the student said. And that's without incorporating anything having to to with Zen Buddhism. 

Other exceptional presentations included, but certainly weren't limited to: Lucas Foglia, "plain communities," and the "Frontcountry"; Allie Mount and her long-distance collaboration with Irish photographer Gary O'Neill; Christine Garceau and the Kodak Girl; and U of O grad student Ian Clark, who showcased five short films from up-and-coming filmmakers. The whole thing was capped by a quirky and moving presentation by Honored Educator Dan Powell, who overwhelmed me with his poignancy and poetic explanations of his photography and the slippage therein. 

The U of O campus was really a sight to see, even in the light rain that fell almost the entire trip. Eugene is kind of a strange little town—as little as a city of 150,000 can be, I suppose—but full of fantastic food and drink. The conference was held together by its volunteers, its presenters, and the U of O itself. Here's hoping that future conferences are as put-together as this one was, because it was certainly a great experience. 

Now go and vote or something, nerds. 

Deadline Extended: "Sick and Tired"

In 2007 or 2008, I became a teacher. I had accumulated enough experience through graduate school for them to trust me with a class of my own. I don't remember if I did a decent job or not with that Beginning Photography class, but I do know one thing about teaching that class:

If I set a deadline for students to meet with particular assignments, I stuck to it.

I had been through undergrad and had experienced professors who would extend deadlines for assignments all of the time. In the world of college, I was always under the impression that I was being prepped for "the real world," a world with deadlines, stress, and consequences. When a teacher took liberties with changing the deadlines for assignments (sometimes on the days when assignments were due), it left the students who had completed things on time with a strange taste in their mouth. There was a collective air of "dude, what gives?" in the classroom.

Because of that, I work through complications with students and never change deadlines the day assignments are due.

I bring all of this up because the same thing is happening in "the real world" now. If I were an accountant or lawyer, this would probably be different. But in the world of art and art exhibitions, it seems that extended deadlines are now par for the course.

The most recent deadline change I've experienced is that for Critical Mass 2012. Photolucida's annual juried competition is one of the biggest networking opportunities for exhibiting photographers.

And this year, I feel like I finally have the chops—and the courage—to enter. The past week was a flurry of Photoshop and scanning, of the spot healing brush and image resizing. I finished up my portfolio of ten images (now visible for the first time on my website. Don't be fooled; these are new versions of familiar photographs) and submitted. The deadline for the competition was noon today.

Twenty minutes after I submitted my work, I saw on Facebook that the deadline for Critical Mass had been extended.

It got me thinking. After a quick search of my photo email inbox, I found that since December of last year, I still had emails about extended deadlines from fourteen different competitions. Many of them are repeats from the same organizations. There are probably many others that I never hear about because I am not on particular mailing lists. The exhibitions and competitions with extended deadlines are listed at the end of this blog.

An extended deadline for an exhibition tells me two things:

1. "We haven't received enough entries for this exhibition, so please tell your friends to submit."
2. "Your work was received prior to the original deadline, and it's not good enough to be shown in our gallery."

While #2 is a big stretch in both logic and imagination, and is obviously not true, item #1 is almost a logistical slam dunk 100% of the time. Most arts organizations struggle to make ends meet, and they charge entry fees in order to recoup their costs. (Critical Mass actually has a section on their FAQ page that outlines where the entry fees go towards their overhead and other expenses.)

Submitting work to shows and being rejected shouldn't be taken personally. I'm getting more and more used to it every week. (A rejection letter came to my house today, actually.) Deadline extensions, however, feel like more of a slap in the face because it makes you call the work you put into submitting work on time into question. When you're given more time, you second guess yourself. At least I do.

It doesn't matter to me if a deadline to a show is extended and I'm rejected from the show. It's happened before. Or even if I get in. That's happened to me too, but that's not the issue here. The issue is that, like the professor who changes deadlines in the middle of a semester, making people work on something for a specific date only to extend it at the last minute is an insult to artists everywhere.

Pick a date and stick to it. If it doesn't work out this time, then set your new (extended) deadline accordingly when the call for entries goes up next year.

And to the artists who aren't submitting their work to these shows on time: get a move on. Or get a planner or something. This isn't undergrad.

*************

Onward Compe 2012 - December 2011
Midwest Center for Photography Juried Exhibition - December 2011
SPE Member Show at RayKo Gallery - December 2011
LACDA International Juried Competition - March 2012
Manifest Gallery INPHA 1 - April 2012
PDN Great Outdoors Contest - April 2012
Midwest Center for Photography "Grow" exhibition - April 2012
PDN Faces Contest - May 2012
Midwest Center for Photography "Vacate" exhibition - June 2012
Midwest Center for Photography "Midwest Photo Emerge" - June 2012
LACDA Juried Competition - June 2012
PDN "The Look" competition - June 2012
Manifest Gallery Recent Paintings - July 2012
Critical Mass 2012 - July 2012

Steph - 8/25/11

"Don't make fun of my email address. I will be around August because where the shit else will I be."


Thus began my communication with Steph, ufck.org's resident sassypants and alpha female, one of only two women I would photograph during my east coast trip in August of 2011.


Even though ufck.org is usually a non-visual place–as in, many people who regularly participate never post photos of themselves–Steph is an exception for one distinct reason: her tattoos. In early 2011 (or late 2010), she had the face of John Goodman tattooed on her right leg. In the run-up to the project, a Michigan tattoo place ran a contest on Facebook to select a winner for $500 towards their next tattoo. Steph's entry was for another tattoo of her next-most adored celebrity: Sam Watterson, or District Attorney Jack McCoy, from NBC's Law and Order, from whom she happens to have named one of her dogs.


"[G]enerally it works best to have someone come in the backyard so I can let [the dogs] out one by one to meet and so I can tell you what to expect from each one of them. They are all cruelty cases, and three of them don't really need the intro, but one of my girls needs  a minute to warm up and my Dachshund cannot be touched. No one is dangerous, they will not bite, but my Dachshund will probably yap the entire time. I know this sounds neurotic, but such is my life."


Thus was my introduction to Steph and her dogs. I arrived with my photo gear, we shook hands, and then she led me to her backyard and proceeded to let each dog out one at a time in order to get accustomed to me. There were six, including the aforementioned Dachshund–who mysteriously didn't have a problem with me–and a much larger dog who was still a young pup and chewed on the legs of my tripod during the entire shoot. 


In my notes for this photo project, I have nothing written down from my visit with Steph. I don't remember what we talked about, except that in talking about the message board itself, she revealed to me on the boards there is a secret section that is only for women. Steph was watching "a murder show" and drinking a Coke. The dogs wandered around during the shoot, and various ones appear in different proofs and final films.  


Steph is a force in the Michigan thread, though she's only met a few people from ufck.org. She insists that she regularly invites people to hang out, but they always bail. Of all the people I met on the trip, she was the subject most similar to their online personality, most notably because of her lack of tact when it comes to addressing anything, whether it's hairstyles, Jersey Shore, dogs, tattoos, or the melange of characters in the Michigan thread. 


When I emailed her to tell her my schedule was more open than I originally intended, because several of the other Michigan folks had busy schedules or just backed out, she bluntly replied:


"Every one in Michigan is a dick except me."

Kern - 8/24/11

Kern is a Spartans fan. So, naturally, when they lost a close conference game a few weeks ago to the Ohio State Buckeyes, I thought of him. He was at the game and tweeted images from his seat. It was a bummer, and I remember thinking that a guy like Kern doesn't deserve to be bummed out.

That's because Kern isn't the kind of guy who'll bum you out. Ever. He's the guy that everyone is friends with. I learned that the instant I stepped into his apartment during the early stages of my whirlwind UFCK.org photo project trip. He offered to help me carry equipment, he offered me something to drink, he introduced me to his roommate, and he asked me what I wanted to watch on TV. (Since it was August, it ended up being the Tigers game.)

Kern knows everyone on the message board. A native Michigander, he attended Michigan State University with no less than four other board members. They're buddies. They go to baseball games, they go to Slow's for barbecue. They hang out. It's what buds do.

Kern boards from his phone. "With Tapatalk [a message board app], there's no need to even board from a computer any more," he told me. He was the first person I had talked to who mentioned boarding entirely from a mobile device. The scope of the social network within ufck.org - and the Internet in general - changes quite a bit when folks aren't tethered to a computer that's connected to a wall. Kern's jovial and welcoming nature was almost evidence of that; as one of the board members who seemed most plugged-in to the other people on the board, it seems appropriate that his mobile device connects him to the rest of us he can't grab a bite or see a ballgame with.

The Spartans bounced back - defying the "kern curse," so to speak - and won last weekend's Big Ten Tournament en route to a number one seed in the upcoming men's NCAA national tournament. I know Kern will be following them along the way, with his friends, and probably posting what he thinks from his phone the entire time.

Super Tuesday! Wacky Wednesday!

And there it is. Super Tuesday has come and gone. As far as the eye-dropper selecting, paint swatch making, and Adobe program switching is concerned, it was a little slice of heaven. Ten states held primaries yesterday, and, because I've been slacking, I've tacked on Washington to this image, showing 11 glorious swatches from which to select colors for whatever you might need paint, fabric, or tattoo ink.

For the sake of brevity, I'll just list the states and where the colors come from, since we're getting into the bulk of the project, and I've run out of flesh tone source images. Trust me, stranger colors are coming soon, so long as all four candidates continue to stay in the race, as they've promised.

Washington - flesh tones from a photo of each candidate's oldest child
Alaska - flesh tones from New York Times.com lead photos from 2/28/12
Georgia - blues from candidates' website logos
Idaho - reds from candidates' website logos
Massachusetts - color samples from photos of each candidates' house's roof
North Dakota - flesh tones (and greys) from photographs of the candidates' parents
Ohio - colors from Time magazine cover images
Oklahoma - New York Times.com candidate profile images
Tennessee - candidates' website background color samples
Vermont - blues from each candidate's undergraduate institution's logo
Virginia - flesh tones from candidate wedding photos

As an aside, I was having a hard time with what to do with the colors from the photos of the candidates' weddings. Newt Gingrich has had three, and I couldn't find an image of Santorum getting married no matter how hard I scoured the web. Since only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul were on the ballot in Virginia, the situation sort of just worked itself out.

Sing-Along: Laura Gibson in La Grande

It was supposed to all be a big deal. Laura Gibson, a Portland-based musician released a new album. The album's name? La Grande, called so after the town in Oregon of the same name. The local Art Center happened to have connections to Laura and planned to showcase the musician and her band in a unique, CD release event.

I live in La Grande. There are few big deals that happen around here, save for the recent fiasco surrounding the dolt-ish mayor and his anti-gay comments from his Facebook page.

Slurs and pigheadedness aside, The Laura Gibson show, through its initial planning stages, was shaping up to be a big deal. Nay, it was becoming a huge deal. The Art Center has grown in popularity in recent months, with growing childrens' art class enrollments, well-attended gallery events, and the occasional fundraiser. The success of a show like this could make the Art Center into something even bigger.

But on the eve of the concert, doubts lingered. Was it going to be a big deal? The presale tickets numbered in the dozens. As in, one dozen. Laura and her bandmates were posting images of their travels on Twitter leading up to the show. Well-traveled by the time they would arrive in La Grande, any snags could potentially sour a relationship between the musician and town she came to love and eventually name an album after.

The band barely made it over the pass on the way from Pendleton. Sound check took longer than expected. Feedback from the microphones was awful. The opening band, local favorites Correspondence School, had their equipment off to the side of the stage while folks started wandering in. There wasn't enough wine. There weren't wristbands to mark of-age patrons, there weren't enough volunteers to take tickets.

With everything seemingly going wrong, with patrons arriving late, with the show starting late, with the feedback, the, well, everything going the way it was, what happened once Correspondence School took the stage was truly magical.

Outside the Art Center, the snow fell. The town stopped. By eight or so, more people stood to watch Correspondence school than had ever stood in the Art Center at one time. The feedback stopped. The wine showed up. The crowd quieted. All of the setbacks didn't matter in the face of the music.

Laura Gibson and her band took the stage a little after nine and, in a way only an acoustic ensemble can, blew the roof off the place. Her birdlike voice and welcoming banter between songs helped the crowd welcome her as an honorary La Grandian for the night. At times, the crowd grew loud amidst the quiet songs from Gibson and her band, but by the end of the night, one of those rare, transcendent moments happened that people have a hard time recollecting, but never forget.

The snow fell and the set wound down.  Laura pulled the microphone  from its stand and addressed the crowd. "We've got one more song for you," she said. "It's a sing-along song. And there aren't even any words to sing." She sang through the "oh oh oh ohhh" twice for the audience and everyone chimed in for another bar.

And the song started. There was no break, no advice when to sing that part and when to stay silent. It just happened. And with "The Rushing Dark," with everyone singing, the chatter subsiding, the eyes focused on the performers, the collective voices of much of La Grande combined to create this one artistic event that, in my humble opinion, seemed very unlike La Grande. This concert ceased to be that, a concert, and instead transformed into an event.

Laura Gibson, her band, "The Rushing Dark," and the rest of the set that night showed people what can be accomplished through true artistry, understanding, and ambition. She didn't have to name her album after our town. Many–the uninitiated, mostly–would wonder what someone from Portland would even find interesting about our quiet mountain town.

But with this show, we all figured it out. We're special. Our town is special. This music is special, like a gift that only an artist can give to a place, because it's not really a thing. Now, for those of us who were at the Art Center (yet another truly special part of our town), that gift only exists in our minds and in whatever grainy photos or videos might remain in the years to come.

So, thanks to Laura and her band for being sweet and friendly, the Art Center for its ambiance, and thanks to this town for making at least one person, Laura–an outsider, no less–come to realize what we've got. Through that, we were all able to realize it ourselves when that one person came to town to show us what it is that we've all got. And we get it every day.

Three States in One!

Well, the wheels are churning as spring approaches. The GOP Primary Paint Swatch© set grows and grows by the week, and I fall behind on blog posts as I come up with new ideas on what to make in the studio.

There were no major surprises or upsets in the primaries in Maine, Arizona, and Michigan. So this blog post doesn't need to drag on and on or anything.

The colors you're seeing come from NYtimes.com images from February 8th (Maine), still images from the Arizona debate on February 22nd (Arizona), and color samples from the candidates' websites' "DONATE" buttons (Michigan). The latter swatch provides nice, GOP-ey red tones to coordinate with the mucky flesh tones of many of the previous swatches.

Have fun coordinating the colors. After a brief stop (and swatch) in Washington state, it's on to Super Tuesday, March 6th, where ten swatches will debut at once.

Aram - 8/23/11

The Continuing Saga of the UFCK Photo Project: the Aram

With four or five or six photo shoots under my belt, the summer months of 2011 were a frenzy of logistical emails and postings. In the beginning of the year, when the project funding was announced, I made plans to travel during the early summer, around the fourth of July.

Then, I bought a house. It was a good step towards normal, adult, decorum, but that ordeal set me back several weeks, and before I knew it, the end of August, Labor Day, and the beginning of my academic year were all staring me in the face and I had to get on the road for the project.

More emails. More planning. More spreadsheets. I used maps and the Internet to try to figure out the best routes to take. I would be shipping my equipment to my parents' house in Michigan, fly out of Boise, pick up and go. By mid-August, I had a crude plan in place to follow a big loop from Michigan through Chicago, down to Tennessee, back up through the DC area to New York before heading home through Philadelphia.

Sorting through the schedules of almost two dozen people was one thing. Stepping off a plane and meeting someone you'd never met before was another. The first person on my list of subjects, and the main focus of the entire project from its inception, was Aram.

Let me tell you a little bit about Aram.

He's a character. A relatively normal character, but a character nonetheless. On ufck.org he is easily the the site's most recognizable members, both because of his appearance and his personality. His loves include the Beatles, vinyl records, the University of Michigan (and especially its Marching Band), Michigan beer, soul music, playing on a vintage baseball team, his Armenian heritage, and his academic studies, among others.

For whatever reason–most likely because Aram has been around ufck.org since its inception and the inception of its predecessors, which has resulted in a more extensive reputation than someone just joining the boards–Aram gets picked on. A lot. Oftentimes, it's in good fun, and he takes it in jest. It's schoolyard teasing among friends. Sometimes, though, it's, well, rougher than that. He's opinionated, sure, but his opinions resonate across this online community oftentimes like wildfire. He's different, and I knew that before I even met him in person. He's emotional, which rarely serves one well in an online forum as sarcastic and caustic as ufck.org can be. But his specific emotions somehow help him stay afloat and keep a level head through all of the derision and nitpicking.

His penchant for oddball comments, photogenic tendencies–which lend themselves quite well to an almost innumerable catalog of animated .gif images–and general demeanor and reputation as this sort of online forum celebrity were what initiated this project in the first place. In my eyes, he was this walking, living, breathing meme, and I had to investigate what it was that made Aram the Aram.

Because I had shipped my photographic equipment to my parents' house, it put the camera out of reach when I landed at Detroit Metro Airport. So I split my photo shoot with Aram into two parts: the first would be a sit-down visit where we talked about anything and everything pertaining to the message board. Then I would return the following day for the photo shoot once I had my gear with me.

This means that I spent the better part of a day traveling from Oregon to Detroit, picked up my luggage and my rental car, and was driving to a stranger's house to sit and chat about who-knows-what. For the first time in my photographic life, I was nervous, and it had nothing to do with standing in front of a classroom of strangers.

I had a notebook, a tape recorder, and a water bottle. No plan, no questions, no getaway plan if Aram turned homicidal and started throwing vintage 45's at me.

Aram answered the door in a Fat Possum Records t-shirt. If that doesn't say anything about what kind of guy Aram is, then this blog post–and maybe the entire photo project–is a giant waste of time.º

My conversation with Aram, and the photo shoot the next day, went almost too well to describe. He was jovial and welcoming and more than willing to talk. He had a hard time believing his life–or online life–was somehow worthy of interest from an artist, let alone photographic documentation. We met for over an hour and a half that first day, and I learned about Aram's fascination with the city of Detroit, how he managed to survive a year-long grad school program in Chicago (and what he was actually studying), and what he was doing back home in his parents' basement.

The following day we continued the conversation while shooting and over lunch. Aram recounted, as best he could remember, his hilarious and eventful night at his first State Champion concert, why he wanted to take a trip to Israel, and what the deal is with his giant beard.

It turns out that Aram is a normal guy like he insists all the time online. The difference between him and many of the other people who post at ufck.org is that he rarely holds back. He's truthful to his ideals in a way that sets off a lot of people. Hence, the poking fun, the comments.

Aram is probably the person that is most comfortable being himself when he's online. And it's strange, since this whole project started with him and how we're all different–we have to be, right?–online compared to our real lives. For Aram, there isn't really a line between those two worlds for him. He's a bit younger, he's been posting online since he was in high school. (I, for instance,  didn't discover the world of online message boards until I was a junior in college.)

While the story about Aram and our visit could go on and on (and will; see the footnote below), the fact that it was my first stop on a long photographic journey was, in retrospect, one of the best things about the entire project. Everyone who agreed to be photographed was more than cordial and welcoming, sure, but there was something about Aram's demeanorª–and the fact of knowing there are people like him out there–that makes me realize that this project has merit, whether or not the in-depth stories of the characters involved ever get told.

º Aram is by no means an indie music expert, but the fact that he was wearing a Fat Possum Records shirt–celebrating the small record label operating out of Water Valley (Oxford), Mississippi says loads about his personality.

ª He would be the first to comment: tl;dr

All In: The GOP Primary Race

So the candidates have been squaring off in debate after debate after debate. There were 18 debates before the first GOP primary in Iowa on January 3.

Up until Tuesday night, the paint swatches were simple in that I had video footage from which to sample flesh tones. Everything was operating to the tune of one debate per primary. Tuesday night threw a wrench in the proceedings, in that there were three primaries being held with no debates in between.

I had to scrounge. In this new TRIPLE SWATCH™ from the GOP Primary Paint Swatch Series©, color selections come from Nevada Caucus results images, NY Times results page thumbnail images, and, in the case of Missouri, high school yearbook photos of the candidates.

Because of the increasing paucity of debates, the palettes are increasing and will become more variegated as the race continues. Expect colors from alma maters, house photos, automobile images (if I can ever find a pic of whatever Rick Santorum drives), and more.

Like some of the more stubborn candidates, I've gone all in with this project. In the weeks to come–I can't even think about Super Tuesday right now: 10 primaries in one night on March 6–this project will grow into something I didn't even begin imagine when it all started. I'm optimistic about the results.

Nevada Caucus: Hey Ladies!

The latest Paint Swatch from the 2012 GOP Primary Series© comes from Nevada, that hotbed of scandal and sex and ho-hum election results. (Mitt Romney won again! Yay!)

Because there wasn't a debate between the most recent primary and this one, colors are taken from images of each candidate's wife's skin tone.

The array of colors from the entire process is starting to form an interesting–if not bland–spectrum. Colors deepen or desaturate but the general monochrome is there on nearly every swatch.

Upcoming elections pose the same problem as the Nevada contest; there are no debates scheduled until the candidates meet in Arizona on February 22nd. Until then, new and interesting ways of representing the candidates' fleshy tones will have to be sought. Stay tuned.

Sunday Art #4

I'm back of the regularly scheduled art schnide with this piece I did for good friend and La Grande-ite Gregory Rawlins. He approached me a few weeks ago to do a poster for his upcoming concert at Union's LG Brewskis pub.

Lots of pen and ink on paper I found in a stack near the west wall of the studio. If you'd like a high quality version for printing, please let me know. I'm sure Greg would love extra hands hanging them around town.

Once Again, Florida Messes Up

After a week in which Newt's campaign seemed to be running on endless energy, with babble about moon colonies and free stuffed animals for everyone in America, Floridians decided to ignore the awesome and choose cyborg-esque Mitt Romney in their GOP Primary election last night.

Lame.

Things were beginning to get interesting, with debates deteriorating to petty accusations between Mitt and Newt while the seemingly real politicians–Rick Santorum and Ron Paul–stood idly by and watched the circus.

This official Florida GOP™ Primary Paint Swatch© features Newt at his pinkest yet, thanks to the cameras of NBC; colors for this swatch were taken from their coverage of the debate on January 23rd.

In other random news, my good buddy Kieran Johnson has been ramping up his photographic output, and his work hasn't looked better. Check out his blog here. You can follow him on Twitter, too, just like you can follow me, if you like.