Moving the project forward.

Okay! In light of the fact that 5 people liked the idea on facebook and it's so far garnered one comment here on this illustrious blog, I've decided to commence with the program! So I will be offering multiple options ranging from 120 dollars down to 20 dollars. All options come with the choice of Human or Monster. For the 120 dollar option you get a sculpture of yourself with a prop (i.e. a chair, a book, a guitar, a machete, whatever). For 100 dollars you get a sculpture of yourself without props. For 60 dollars you get a half sized version (3-5 inches) . And for 20 bucks I will offer a little human or monster, you decide, based on your pose. Also the first person who sends me his picture in their desired pose will get their sculpture for free and I will use that sculpture as the launch video for the project (but only send me a picture if you're committed). The 50th and the 100th sculptures will also be free.

Toys Are Us

So I'm bout to set up a kickstarter project and before I do I want to know how many people are actually interested. So here's my plan:

I want to create a small population of miniature metal people, based on pictures sent to me by You.

In other words I want people to send me pictures of themselves in various poses (serious or silly, with or without props) and I will recreate them as a small (8-10 inch) sculpture. You will have the option to choose either a relative-likeness (perfect portraiture would not be possible on this scale in welded in steel) or monster-ization of the picture. Each sculpture will be around 100-200 dollars (I haven't figured everything out yet exactly). I want this to be massive, so that each little sculpture can interact with the other ones, which means I'll need to make somewhere around 100 sculptures for this to work. The whole project will culminate in a weekend long event on my property where people are invited to camp out and spend some time in the rural upstate-NY. Lemme' know what you guys think and I'll move the project forward accordingly.

Art: a three sided coin

Artistry, like a coin, is three sided. There are the two faces that everyone is very aware of, and then there is the edge, which is a side in and of itself. The front face of the coin is the image of the successful artist; the lavish character who shows in manhattan galleries and is bid on by wealthy collectors. The back side of the coin is the craftsman, who still falls into the realm of art, but makes products of a salable nature. The edge of the coin is the art, the passion.

The front side: When people first think about art they think about the four living artists who's names they know and the 50-some-odd dead ones who are etched into history. Living artists that have reached the tips of the public tongue are Banksy, Jeff Koons, Damien Hurst and.... Richard Sera (?)... and out of those most people probably just know Banksy (and everyone knows the dead guys). But when people think of art, there is a glamour, a shirking of societal norms, a panache, something intangible. This is the face of art. What this group actually represents, however, are not really artists, but very smart business men. This image represents the top .01 percentile (a microcosm of the american dream).

The Back Side: If you're an artist and you care to survive in society and you don't belong to that .01 percentile (or happen to be in possession of an incredible fortune), you probably belong to this category. You make salable items that can be bought or sold for a moderately sized audience. You make a modest living, selling a particular product, and doing fairly monotonous work, while occasionally doing what you love to do on the side. Often the product which sustains you in this realm overtakes the joy and it simply becomes a job, and the idea of doing the work we enjoy (after we spent all day doing the work we don't enjoy) is just too daunting to consider. And to the same effect there is also the artist who works at the whims of his client. His or her personal vision is merely an additive spice to the sauce the of the customers directives. Subjugation to the passenger seat. Not pleasant. But it pays the bills.

The Edge: Ah to reside on the edge. What a precipice it truly is. Those names you know, of the long since dead, have all certainly ridden this edge (go watch Lust for Life or Rembrandt and you'll see what I mean). To be on the edge is to be guided by our passions, to ignore the customer and ignore the world and it's demands. To exist for the art for the sake of the art. Of course the potential to turn the corner exists; to go from nothing to being on top of the world... but that isn't the focus. The focus is the art itself and furthering the field of creative expression. It is to realize that you are part of something much greater than yourself and to strive to make progress in that realm. It is to show that art is not just here to become wallpaper, but that humanity benefits from it, that what we represent in our art is a powerful representation of what we are as a society, and the better the art, the better we can represent that. That is the edge.

Re:Thinker

So what if I don't write all that much in this post....

Blogging: The Non-Addiction

Fuck. I do this way to often. I say I'm going to start blogging again and then I go two months without a post.... It's ludicrous. It's like the guy who says he's gonna start working out and he goes hard for the first five days and then is done for the next 6 months. I gotta stop doing that. I gotta hit the gym hard (where gym refers to blogspot.com). It seems I've amassed a huge following (all 6 of you), who occasionally tell me they've read my blog and are keeping track. So I mustn't leave everyone in the lurch all the time, because certainly things are going on. But the very idea of a blog s always so conflicting to me. You see I want to say some very interesting stuff, but then I worry, will some family member be reading this who will be offended, or is it too strange to expose certainty quirks and qualities to people I don't know all that well... isn't that stuff better saved for the intimacy of human contact? Well the answer is yes and no. Yes, there are certainly things that don't belong on blog posts, but I should probably be a little more open.

So let me begin by explaining some new happenings in my life... One reason that I haven't been blogging often is that I'm writing a lot these days (counterintuitive isn't it), I find if I am writing so much, it becomes hard to split up my writing time between so many different things and I need to focus on the task at hand. The particular task which has been nagging at me is writing a speech. I was accepted to speak at the TEDxFlushingmeadows event (april 22nd), this speech has really been consuming much of my focus for a long time, I've been writing it, and editing it, discarding it and rewriting it, sending it out having it critiqued, rewriting it, trying to fine tune it so that it's just right, it's an ongoing process... also I've never spoken in public before... so aside from the speech itself I'm quite nervous about delivering it. But it's no excuse for not blogging.

What else is up you ask... well when I got home, the conditions were less than ideal for living and working, so I took care of a few odds and ends, and packed off to florida for about a month, where I built a Bobcat for a customer who lives down there (as well as a bunch of other stuff too, like a piece about how difficult math can be.)

And, to reference my parenthetical statement above, that is another thing which is truly occupying my time: Math! (By golly!) It really has been quite consuming lately. Not to say I have a knack for it, because I certainly don't, grasping ideas is quite a struggle, especially when I'm trying to relearn everything from algebra on up, so it's quite a venture... but I just finished reading Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, and I must say I haven't been as entranced by a book in ages. They way it combines self referential material, with comical dialogues, mathematical statements, zen buddhism, physics, logic, the human mind, computer programming, number theory, macro-biology, music, and art, all in one seamless.. to use the author's own words.. "Endlessly rising canon"... it was truly a wonderful experience (which took me over two months). So now I'm excited to move on to the next scientific journey.. And on to gardening... and a seriously busy season of work... and soccer... and building some new structures on my property.... and keeping You (whomever you are), posted... whew.

Here's some pictures of stuff you probably haven't seen before:

Rusty the Goat and Friends. A pictographic adventure!

Easy Come, Easy Goat

So over the last several weeks I have spent my time laboring over an eight and half foot tall Humanoid-Goat sculpture, aptly named Rusty (name courtesy of Adi). The last week I was rushed to finish the sculpture before packin' up and heading off so I had to work long hours and do some serious improvisation with my slim pick of rusty (and very difficult to weld) scrap. Nonetheless I managed to finish the piece in time and we had a nice little party to celebrate it's completion and my departure.

My time at Keyma Farms was nothing short of wonderful. Here's a quick photo log of some of the stuff I made there and some of the people I met.

A bench made by my father and I

The Laughing Tomatoe

Rusty the Goat

Bunchoo, the most incredibly skilled and talented man I have ever met in my life, and I.

Better shots of Rusty coming soon.

About Time

Well aside from a brief rundown of a events and a small musing on the nature of the Israeli Coffee habit, there really hasn't been too much information on what my experience here is like. So I will dedicate this post to some more introspective notions on my time here and what it's all about.

Israel is an interesting place. The city areas are as jam-packed... are more jam-packed, than any place I've ever been. Driving is like an extreme sport, coffee is the life the blood, and if you walk into a gas station with 200 dollars in your pocket you're lucky to leave with 10 shekels. It's also imbued with the feeling of conflict, you know something is astir around you. That these people are one side and these are on another and everyone has a different perspective as to why exactly. Kids (18-22 ish) walk around with powerful hi-tech weaponry (m16's being the weapon of choice) at all times and it's very common and casual. But that is not the life I'm living.

Where I am it is a whole different world. Only an hour or two south is the rural farming area where I have planted myself. The days start early but move quickly. Time has taken on that liquid quality where everything moves by faster than you would like. Where the events of the day pass by before you can take into account all that happened, and you find yourself hoping for an extra couple hours to squeeze in. The diet is almost entirely vegetable, for lunch it's usually a salad, a stir fry, and another type of stir fry, and maybe Thai sticky-rice, but it's still great. The vegetables are fresh and delicious and ever-present (yellow peppers are the new apple). Some days are spent working harder at preparing and consuming meals than much else, although that is rapidly changing. The development of my small outdoor shop is a cause for me to try and get in some serious work hours so that I make the most of my small window of time, and leave behind me a decent footprint of work.

Is reality

So I didn't know what exactly I was getting into with this trip, I just figured after so many years I'm due to visit Israel (and my father had the same sentiments, only more so). Upon our arrival we rented a car, visited my mother (who happens to live in Israel), visited my aunt and some cousins, had a wonderful time with them, and then we proceeded on a little quest. We set out to find a way to make sculpture and (in my case) learn a little bit about agriculture. We went to the north to a beautiful Kibbutz and stayed a couple nights; we were treated to incredible meals and wonderful hospitality. Due to some complex litigations and insurance policies, we weren't able to stay there. So we journeyed down south to see some other places.. Anyway, through a little research and the help of a friends WWOOF account password I was able to pinpoint a nice little farm in the south of Israel that grew tomatoes and had goats and stuff like that. So I called them up, told them I was a welder, told them I was about an hour away, and they, in turn, told me how to get there.

The place is called Keyma farms and it's really a very wonderful and laid back environment. They accept volunteers through the WWOOFing website, who they employ to pick tomatoes and rake leaves and such. Now my situation is a little different than the average volunteer. You see instead of doing stuff in the greenhouse, I have been given the job, alongside my father, of.. well... making sculpture. Over the last couple days we have built a small metal shop in the area where they family usually parks their cars. We've gotten scrap and a welding machine, a torch, grinders, the whole shebang. So I'll be making some sculptures for the farm, fixing farm equipment, and teaching people how to weld during my stay here. I also have taken to a game called Taco, which is played by the migrant Thai farmers, that is essentially playing volleyball with your feet (and head) over a badminton net (on a basketball court). Anyway there is much more to tell, but I'll leave it at that and tell more later.

Oh and here's some pictures.

This guy is weed-wacking the desert.....

Caffei-Nation

(The first brief update on my journey)

Israel: the land of Milk and Honey…. I feel the need to rephrase that, to modernize that saying, lets call it…. the land of Sand of Coffee. I find that every nation has it's drug of choice, the Irish like to drink, the Scottish like to drink, the Russians like to drink, people in the Netherlands smoke pot, people at Phish concerts like LSD, the Israeli's drink coffee. Now sure, people everywhere like to wake up and have a cup of coffee, maybe two, maybe three! But in israel it's different. There is a steady diet of Coffee interspersed with the occasional meal. At the sides of highways you see small shacks that sell nothing but coffee, the bars are Bar/Restaurants/Coffee, during lunch it's coffee, after dinner it's coffee. When you decline coffee you are an unfamiliar entity. And it's extra strong coffee no less! Now let's assess the implications of these drugs of choice, in northern california where the drug of choice is Marijuana we find a laid back mentality, a sort of carefree laissez-faire attitude, in Ireland it's drink and sing and fight, at Grateful Dead Reunion tours we see tye-dye and bead-making, in israel you have aggressive salesmanship and tailgating.

(More to come soon)

Before and After

So I am about to embark on an extended journey to Israel (surprise!) and hopefully I will be diligent enough to get in some nice Mediterranean posts up on this blog. Until than I will bid adieu' with a little before an after. A farewell to the winter wonderland and an homage to the life it teemed with beforehand.

Of Physics and Florida

I started my trip out lost in the middle of Miami Beach far away from where I needed to be. Where I needed to be was in Miami proper (where I arrived an hour earlier and took a bus away from), but I was able to route myself and meet up with my friend Yibai at his amazing display in at the Mike Weiss booth at Art Basel. I was going to stay at a hostel but Yibai offered me a couch at the Fountainbleu and so I was invited in to a circumstance of unexpected luxury (quite a nice deal). Yibai busied himself with meetings and deliveries and various orders of business while I took it easy and watched youtube videos of Richard Feynman while sitting in a bubble bath. Now before I continue my story about florida let me talk about Mr. Feynman, who sparked a whole new and interesting chapter of my life (the physics one). Richard Feynman is a physicist from brooklyn who has an incredible talent with relating the complex ideas of science into layman terms. So I went out and read a couple of his books which were not scientific, just him reminiscing about events in his life, and often they would touch upon the scientific. And the more I read the more interested I became. So I went out and got a book of his science lectures, and I devoured it! So I went out and got the next on, but after only a single chapter I found that the mathematics were too complicated for me to grasp... so I've since hit the books and have been studying math voraciously in hopes to get to a level where feynman's basic physics lectures are not too complicated.

Anyway, back to Miami: So at night my friend who happened to live in Miami would take me out to clubs and get me into VIP areas where expensive alcohol was poured freely. A very interesting experience, mind you. You see I did not know what to expect coming in to this whole trip, and what I was introduced to was stranger yet. After weaving through a dimly lit and densely packed club, I am taken to a private table with seven to eight guys sitting around, most of them are exhausted from repeatedly going out and drinking the previous nights, each ogling the closest and most attractive girl. And everywhere I turned there was an extremely attractive girl, it was as if they only let attractive people in, which, as my friend informed me moments later, was actually the truth. Okay thats nothing special to Miami, that's all over the world. Indeed. But this sort of event would become synonymous with my time spent in Miami, and each place I would see the same faces repeatedly, all of them regularly staying out at these clubs until 3 or 4 AM. It was a strange strange place, and (sadly) I cannot make claims that I was above the pale, despite my sitting around and attempting to objectively observe the situation. There is something about these club scenes where it seems to absorb you into this process of de-evolution, where the primal urges of mankind become the sort of common language and actual verbal interaction is completely superfluous. It's like our way of maintaining the animal instincts which got us to this stage of evolution; it's as if Miami is a great petri dish where survival of the fittest is applied to aesthetics.

I might make a very large sculpture incorporating some of the strangeness of this experience, more on that in the months to come.

As for the rest of my florida trip, it was spent relaxing at my grandparents house, watching more videos about physics and science, as well as reading some Richard Dawkins and watching atheism debates (blasphemy!).

Physics.

"Imagine spending seven years at MIT and research laboratories, only to find out you're a performance artist" said Golan Levit as he introduced his 2004 TED talk .

So now: Imagine spending 23 years of your life dedicated solely and only to being an artist, only to find out that you want to be a physicist.

(Don't worry I'm still gonna keep making sculpture, I just need to figure out how to combine the two.)

Anyway, I have been enjoying relaxing in florida immensely and will give good account of as many of the interesting things I can reasonably fit into one blog entry as possible.

Business Card and a Basel Expedition*.

In order to escape the cold, visit my grandparents, and catch up on current trends in the art world, I'm heading to Florida. I will be catching the tail end of Art Basel and spending a few days in Miami, hopefully meeting with my friend and esteemed sculptor Liao Ybai, as well as a good friend from college.

One issue that I had to address before making this trip was that I have finally finished the massive supply of business cards I printed out some two or three years ago. The last batch of cards was a standard black card with white text, and quite frankly I've grown tired of it, so I decided to do something a bit different. I actually fabricated all the different elements of the business card and placed them on sheet of steel ten times the size of an actual business card, I then had my photographer friend (and talented welding student) Mike Bloom come over and capture the whole thing on his high powered camera. And Voila!

*I wonder if anyone caught that Austin Powers reference.

The Engine Room.

Despite my complaints about the rough dues paid in the art world it doesn't mean I'm left unequipped to deal with said burdens of the real world. We all succumb to the stresses and pressures of reality here and there, but what keeps us in the race is the ability to dust ourselves off and keep going. Keep on keepin' on. So I've been doing some small commissions and practicing my portraiture sculpting, a realm of work which truly hones my skills. I've also take to studying the literature of brilliant physicist Richard Feynman and thus sparked a new found interest in all things physics (not mention trying to learn the math involved!). It keeps me busy.