Prozac: One-a-day.

So with about a month and a half left until the show and the completion of my kickstarter project, I've decided I will post one sculpture a day from the project, until the day of the show. Granted, I'm not always up on my blogging game, so I may lag behind or miss some days, but for the most part I will be posting a picture of a completed sculpture each day alongside the photo which the sculpture is based off of. I'll be taking pictures in strange and unusual settings, and even doing some creative editing to try and turn the pictures into interesting little diptychs [two-pictures-next-to-eachother] .

So I'm gonna start you off with two today, and then it'll be one a day for the next month and half.

This is the story of a Hurricane

There is a strange feeling before a hurricane. Especially in a place that isn't accustomed to hurricanes. It feels as if I'm in some sort of an echo chamber, where the weather's tendencies are amplified, to the point where every whistle and whimper of the air is a cacophonous scream. It's not so much that each piece of weather on it's own is surprisingly jarring, it's that the build up around the entire weather system makes each drop of rain and gust of wind feel like the harbinger of a great whirling weather system; a consuming goliath slowly marching it's way up the coast line, taking note of the areas to our immediate south, but only as casual acquaintances on the way to it's ultimate destination: right here.

That's right. This storm has come to knock loose a branch upon the hood of my car while I drive briskly to safety on a country road and leave me paralyzed or dead. Of course this isn't what's going to happen. Nor is it the reality I live with in the moments leading up to this storm, but the pulse of the world around me is something to this effect. I can't say the storm won't do damage. Quite the contrary, I can say it's already done damage. Whatever fear and worry and foreshadowed notions of the storm to come, of subways flooding (causing rats to swarm the streets), of trees being plucked out of the moist soil like rotting weeds, of cars being blown off the grown like windswept umbrellas, is probably doing more damage to our nerves than the storm will to any of the surrounding area. I wish I was being facetious with my accounts of what people presume the oncoming storm to impend, but all of these things have been voiced to me by the people around me. Now certainly I don't know what's going to happen, and taking precautions seems like a good idea, but the air… there is something to the air before this storm, which feels like I am not watching the coming of a level 1 hurricane, but rather there is a tingling vibration like the nuclear pulse of an ever uncertain cold war.

Oh and updates on the show, new pictures of the latest kickstarter projects, a video, some t-shirt designs, stickers, postcards, and a glimpse into the next (massive) project I plan on undertaking, all coming very very soon. (seriously).

The Human Particle

[Disclaimer: It is generally frowned upon to take the ideas of quantum physics and mathematics and use them philosophically. So instead I'm trying to work my way backwards and take standard philosophical concepts such as the self and ideas and thoughts and interpret them through quantum physics and mathematics.]

What if, hypothetically speaking, we are like the particles of quantum mechanics. We are corpuscular (that is to say, we are particles), which is easily stated, because we are single objects. Mathematically speaking we are topologically equivalent to a sphere or any other object of genus 0 (one could argue that our orifices would make us more akin to a torus or double torus, but this argument is fairly immaterial). But we don't need mathematics to see our particulate nature, we can do a much simpler exercise, we can zoom out. We can zoom out far enough that we still see people, but we see them as tiny little specs, dots, moving around chaotically like some confused liquid. So the idea that humanity is corpuscular is not extremely hard to wrap your brain around, it may be somewhat abstract but it's fairly easy to grasp. Now in order for me to make my supposition that we are like the particles of quantum mechanics, that is to say both wave and particle, I must now elucidate how we are like the wave.

The conscious mind is a very mysterious entity, the subject of thousands of years of debate, and I certainly don't attest to have solved any of those mysteries. But I would say that what arises from consciousness and the human mind are some very wave like qualities. For one thing, the activity of the mind is an ever fluctuating thing, a series of ons and offs, of peaks and crests. We have moments of inspiration, during which many areas of our mind our light up with neural (electrical) activity, and we have periods of sleep (specifically stage 3 and 4) during which our mind is quiet and restful. But this analogy to the wave form is fairly weak, for it is more of a two dimension comparison than it is an actual mapping. What I would like to attempt, is to successfully transpose the concept of a wave on to the concept of humanity (or vice versa) and even on to the individual person. First let's think about waves for a moment. Imagine the surface of the earth to be one single tranquil sheet of water. Just a perfect blue sphere floating in space, held together by gravity, and for the moment it is completely calm, not a single ripple on its surface. Now imagine a massive meteor crashes into the sphere and disrupts its perfect surface. We watch as a huge wave will form, emanating from that focal point of the meteor crash, growing in size as it heads towards it's peak. The wave is so massive that the ripple goes around the entirety of the earth until it meets itself on the other side of the planet, crashing with tremendous force and sending smaller waves that crest and crash and strike each other and send out more smaller waves. So we see from the initial impact, the entire system is now in a state of flux and activity, and the whole of the surface is disrupted with waves and ripples and motion, all of them rising and falling, cresting and crashing. This is the action of a wave in three dimensional spherical geometry. Now something similar to this is happening every day but the medium I'm speaking of is not simple water molecules, comprised of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, rather it is a drastically more complex molecule which interacts in drastically more complex ways: The Human Molecule. The wave form is the idea; a development of the conscious mind. And the medium through which it travels is sight and sound (waves), and it is received by other human molecules, where it picks up steam and it grows and it crests and it crashes, and again subsequent ripples are formed. But this time there is a new dimension, the axis of time is added for the ideas exist not just in the present moment, but they linger on as wave cresting through our linear progression of time, rising and falling with the trends of humanity in what could conceptually be called an infinite number of times. Like a religion, or an economy, or a song or a social movement: like war and peace, like love and hate, they are dips and troughs on a wave rippling through the liquid surface of humanity.

And so at the same time as we are walking physical objects we are also ideas and waves which ripple through humanity: such is my conception of the dual wave-particle nature of man.

Hello again.

So I've been an absentee blogger for quite some time now, I've had a strange couple months, to say the least. To put it simply I liked this girl and things didn't work out. You know how that goes. Anyway, as is common of that situation I've been at low ebb, and so blogging goes by the way side. But this is no time to be at low ebb! I have 148 kickstarter orders (thank you all!) to fulfill, a garden full of cherry tomatoes and I've joined my first ever soccer league, though my team always loses... So yeah! I will be updating the website in the next few days, adding a whole bunch of writings, possibly streamlining the site a bit (if you guys have any suggestions, I'm welcome to them). I also have some announcements! The world has continued to turn ceaselessly (that's not the announcement) and things are certainly happening, certainly. The kickstarter project, as I've already mentioned, demands 148 sculptures (ranging from 3 to 10 inches), which I will be building over the course of the next two months, and when I'm finished there will be an epic show (if I may say so myself). The exact date and location of the show will be announced at the beginning of next week (it'll probably be somewhere around mid October). Also new apparel coming soon! And stickers! And I while I'm at it I could use some help. So I'm planning a camp out at the end of this month, and you're all invited, so if you want to escape the urban jungle and get your hands dirty, you may be in luck.

More soon. Here's some food for thought.

Current Kickstarter!

So at this point there are 17 days remaining for my kickstarter project and so far I've got around 30 orders. My goal is to hit 80! So I need to up my efforts. I need the help of all my friends and family in order to get this project moving. This project is not specifically about each sculpture (though each piece is integral to the whole), but rather about the accumulation of all the sculptures into one giant mass of figures, humans and monsters, interacting with each other. A swirling microcosm of the madness of humanity. So please (and I must apologize for I hate agonizing over solicitation, but it is a necessary evil sometimes) every bit of help counts, even if it's only a 1 dollar backing or you just post this on your facebook wall, whatever you can do is greatly valued. Thanks again.

Kickstarter update/rant.

The Kickstarter Project

Okay so the project is now 12 days in, with over 1600 dollars towards the goal raised. But now I need to step it up. With only 28 days left to complete the goal of 8000 I will need everyones help. At this point many people may be wondering why such a high number. Well granted the undertaking of making the 80 some odd pieces will be staggering and ridiculous. But that is really the point. I'm tired of art not being staggering and ridiculous. In fact that's what truly irks me about art in this day and age. I was flipping through Art in America today, and every other page was some sparse soulless work ( for more examples of sparse and soulless see Richard Sera's retrospective at The Met), and it's really tiring and a little upsetting (although it's not nearly as upsetting as this or this but I'll save that angst for another day). So my goal here is not to just make something vapid and simple and easy. But to sweat and toil and work my ass off and make something truly and utterly incredible. That is why I want to create 80 or more little figures, all interacting and doing crazy things. So that when you enter the space which I have created for these characters, you are truly blown away, the detail will draw you in and on top of that you, the audience, are helping me create the project itself. I will post a new video of me making one of these sculptures. Also new options are available such as pets, family packages, one person requested they be riding on a giraffe. So even if you can't buy a sculpture, just the general support and letting people know will be a great help to make this project a success. I appreciate it.

Keep on Kickin

Toys Are Us. The video

The kickstarter project will be up and running by the end of the weekend.

Toys Are Us. A sneak preview.

So I was hoping to have the video done today, but I still have a few kinks to work out so I'm putting it off until tomorrow. But the first installment of the Toys Are Us project was completed today. The sculpture (which I've dubbed "GET TO THE CHOPPA!") is of my good friend Adam Soffer. He didn't care whether the sculpture was a human or a monster, so I decided to make it a little bit of both. So here's a sneak preview...

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.....