Posts Tagged ‘drawings’
Saturday, February 6th, 2010
I know I should be posting my “art” online more often. I often gloss over the process of scanning and resizing and uploading and tagging because there’s only so much time. But this drawing is especially meaningful to me if for no other reason than I think it’s a really good drawing! I also had a really nice discussion at Heathers with some Turkish bird whose name I can’t remember right now – has a C and an O in it – about the accessibility and immediacy of drawing. Which was nice because the conversation emerged after I made this drawing, in a sketchbook in my pocket, and my mind was already buzzing around these very ideas: about how an artist can be anywhere at anytime and drawing is always at their dispose. Including sitting at the bar by one’s lonesome, surrounded by young hip people – all it takes is pen and paper. I plan on donating this drawing to Heathers the next time I’m in the East Village, so if you happen to be there (everybody goes there at least once I reckon) give it an ogle, and salivate as I did over this Whisky at Heathers (Maker’s Mark, Neat), pen on paper, 2010.
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
one of the truly greatest liberties of being an artist is having the ability (for lack of a better word) to envision a different world, or a world as you would like it – sure, they’re going to build that airport, so it might as well look like this! Like I said there’s really no one word to describe this notion. Perhaps ability, but also vision, courage, audacity, they all apply.
Such as Robert Smithson’s vision-liberty-audacious drawing of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, from 1967, two years before construction on the airport began (it opened in January 1974). Approximately 150 (I started to count but didn’t get too far) ‘wandering earth mounds and gravel paths’ populate the area around the terminals, runways and towers that would become the airport proper, rather than filling it in with additional infrastructure and forfeited land as it is now.
One can only imagine what it would have been like flying in to see the land rolling, bubbling, wandering around one’s vision as one slices through the air above.
An imposing idea that never would have been ratified given the rivalry and difficulty already between the two cities to agree on a joint-airport location and design. Still, this drawing on blueprint typifies all that can be great about being an artist, and suggests a world of possibilities. A world outside the gallery where contemporary art actually transforms the landscape and works alongside architecture. Instead we are left with a world where that same architecture has merely become an encasement for a type of ‘public art’, where the airport has simply become another type of display space for the work of other contemporary masters. Poppycock.
Wednesday, March 21st, 2007
my matey Mikey B sent me this link to The Fireladders of SoHo. I work in the SoHo area so I’m pretty familiar with – and very fond of – this cast iron district.
Around 200 drawings, all referenced apparently from really low-res camera phone images (click any drawing to get the reference photo section), the drawings show a diverse range of cast-iron escape ladders, from the grand double-sided multi-story ladder of 142 Mercer to the discreet side-of-the-building mounted 5-story single-drop vertical ladder of 113 Greene, from simple but elegant ladders found at 74 Wooster or 53 Mercer to the absolutely gargantuan 13-story monster found at 451 Broome! Potential favorites however may be ladders such as 27 Mercer (so simple!) or 55 Grand (it has it all, and only two stories tall!). The collection also includes the 101 Spring Street building (during its recent renovation time, wrapped and scaffolding-framed), bought nearly 40 years ago by Donald Judd and currently owned and tour-operated by the Judd Foundation.
For the Judd Foundation, tours are an outrageous $30, for the fire escape ladders of SoHo, all they require is your admiration.
Wednesday, January 10th, 2007
Here is my submission for the Plausible Artworlds exhibition of posters I posted about yesterday.
