dayton is not in ohio

Oh, Brother…

Oak Park has an arts district that’s located two blocks from our house. It’s a community based endeavor that includes a few small galleries of the mid-level commercial, and arts and crafts variety (you know, the kind with names like “Art Gecko”). It’s not exactly my thing, but fantastic for what it is. It’s got the perfect independent coffee shop, boutique maternity clothing store, high-end thrift shop, mom and pop barber, yoga studio, and a few nice little restaurants.

And now it has new signs demarcating the little corridor on Harrison Street. I think the signs are a great way to establish the district, draw in more businesses and help it grow… There’s just one little annoying thing: they look a lot like gigantic, red, disposable razors.

These drawings don’t illustrate too well that the signs arch back at the top, finishing off the razor design. It is beyond me how designers, arts district coordinators, and community leaders can work on something like this, and no one notices in any meeting (or has the jewels to say it) that you’re about to pay $120,000 for something that looks an awful lot like a gigantic shaving tool. I can understand the community folks, but the guy who designed the thing? The artists? It reminds me of the first time I saw a Mexican guy in a sombrero on the front grill of a Toyota about 15 years ago.

(The fun part of this is that I have an idea brewing for some guerrilla art in the form of a giant Barbasol can.)

Here’s a great video about the work the Presbyterian Church (USA) has been doing in Louisiana and Mississippi after Katrina. That muscular, handsome guy about a minute into the video that shares my last name is the body double for my brother, Scott.

First of all, it’s finally warmed up a bit here in Chicago. By warm, I mean low 90s, which, by comparison to where I grew up (New Orleans), is like a nice late fall day. It’s really not hot at all, y’all. I think it’s appropriate to pay homage to Chicago summer weather to atone for my snide attacks this winter (1, 2). It has been, by far, the most comfortable summer of my life. Frankly, I think it makes the winters worth enduring.

Work is going well for me, although between my working and Karen dancing I have very little time to spend in the studio. I’m OK with this, actually. Summer has always been a slow time for me regarding production of work, but I tend to do a bit of the important reading and thinking that make fall and winter my most productive seasons. One very exciting part of my summer job has been learning to use some of the advanced fabrication equipment at the school. Had I not taken this job, I would have had to take a class to learn some of these things — and probably not as thoroughly. I actually conducted a CNC orientation yesterday. Here’s the machine we use. To know it well enough to teach it is very exciting. And I’m getting paid!

Karen is out of town right now, for a dance workshop in Houston. Karen’s folks are here while she’s gone. It’s a great exchange: they get to spend lots of time with Anna, and I get to retain my sanity. I can remember how difficult it was surviving without Karen while she was traveling with Momix, and I’m happy that Anna is spared being subjected to life as the daughter of a bachelor, if even for one week. She does like mac and cheese and “Ronald Donald,” but no healthy, growing kid deserves cuisine like that for an entire week. She already generally looks a bit like Ronald McDonald when I get her dressed. That is, like a clown. A final note on having help this week: I’m a pretty good craftsman, and I can build, or learn to build/fabricate most things while working pretty naturally with a variety of materials, but I think God created long, silky hair to keep folks like me very humble. I have NO idea how the women in this family install a hair clip so that it won’t fall out within five minutes. I’m in awe, and I’m grateful Grammy is around!

Sometimes I second-guess my frequent sports posts. (how’s that for a non sequitur…) I think that perhaps it’s not good to follow a sports team so closely. Professional sports really is a fantasy world. That’s why I can’t wait for college football season. Seriously, my main reservation about following sports is the time it takes up to listen, watch and to read about. If I spent all of that time reading good literature, exploring the library, and doing other kinds of research, I’d probably be better off as an artist. To tell you the truth, I just don’t know. Part of me wants to respond that this makes me more well-rounded, but that’s probably hogwash. I’m sure there are plenty of well-rounded people out there who become well rounded by learning to play the piano, not listening to ball games. The Romans had a phrase that I remember from high school latin, Panem et Circenses: Bread and Circuses. I remember it vaguely as referring to the means by which the Roman ruling authority was able to keep the citizens pacified. As long as you keep the people fed, and keep the people entertained, then you can do what you will. I think fed and distracted is even more accurate. The one thing an artist cannot afford to be for any long period of time, is distracted. I willingly distract myself far too frequently with infinite, meaningless rabbit trails (”reading the news”) on the internet, and keeping up with baseball, football, golf, auto racing, cycling, etc… I so willingly and easily distract myself with all of the distracting offerings that life in America affords. Panem et Circenses… gotta give that one some thought.

I’m currently reading Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, on my brother’s recommendation. I’m finding it fascinating, and very enjoyable to read. It’s an imagined account of Jesus as a seven year-old. I think I’m enjoying it so much because, as a former atheist, Rice explicitly affirms the incarnation in her introduction. It’s allowed me to relax reading it and know that I’m not reading some veiled attack on orthodox Christian theology.

I’m currently listening to Bach arrangements by Leopold Stokowski. Karen is currently rehearsing a reconstructed Doris Humphrey modern dance work titled Passacaglia, set to Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. We searched iTunes to find the piece so that I could listen to it, and stumbled across Stokowski, who arranged the version the dance it set to. I love Bach, but I have never heard Bach played like Stokowski conducts it. I’m tempted to say that I’ve never heard Bach before. It’s just unbelievable to have heard a particular piece of music so many times, to have loved it, and then hear it one more time and marvel at the fact that it can become so completely brand new, so completely, completely sublime.

I’m off to the studio today, for a bit. I need to begin cleaning and organizing for the school year. I also might try to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Art Institute to see some shows that I’ve neglected seeing yet.

But as Chesterton says, “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing….” you know the rest. I’m… I’m, just. I’m speechless. Why do I torture myself.

There are only two reasons why any Philadelphia Philly batter would be the final batter in a ball game. One, you hit a walk-off __________ (home-run, single, anything…) or two, you get the last out.

The same is true in the All-Star game. The same is WORSE in the All-Star game - uh, oh… did I give it away, Aaron Rowand. Oh! Uh.. sorry Aaron, that… that you put a final end to the National League rally…

It’s not your fault. It’s Tony LaRussa’s fault. Two words: A-L-B-E-R-T. P-U-J-O-L-S.

I’m not proud of the fact that I don’t care about those readers who have no idea what I’m talking about. Right now, I don’t care.

It’s worth doing badly.

Faithful readers may remember my posts (1,2) on Cermak Plaza, the shopping center that has been a somewhat controversial home to many artworks. The Chicago Tribune reports that the “Car Kabob” is to be destroyed to make way for a new Walgreen’s.

Note to artists: If anyone ever invites you to create an artwork in a strip mall, and you’d rather not see that artwork destroyed, say no, regardless of how much money they give you.

The best example of this poaching at Cermak Plaza is James Wines’ “Floating McDonald’s.” This was a McDonald’s designed and built by his firm SITE (they’ve designed the single family skyscraper in India that has been in the news recently). I saw old pictures of the McDonald’s, and went to see it, only to discover that the feature that made it “float” had been bricked in - essentially destroyed.

(then)

(now)

I contacted Mr. Wines to find out why and when this had taken place, to which he replied that he was unaware it had happened. He added: “This is a particularly ironic moment for the “Floating McDonald’s” to have been destroyed, since the FRAC collection (part of Centre Pompidou in Paris) just bought all of the drawings of this project for the institution’s permanent collection.”

…the freedom to buy 50-cent soft-serve from the Swedish, I guess.

I, like the person that sent this to me, really want to believe that this was delivered tongue-in-cheek. Sadly, I’m not so sure. However it doesn’t seem too far removed from some of the actual ‘research’ conducted around this highly politicized, pseudo-scientific debate.