love_london_la
In this collaboration, London-based, Polish artist Lena Janczak and I share an Instagram feed. Ethereal letters. A conversation. An exchange of ideas. Of cities. Of people. Of love.
In this collaboration, London-based, Polish artist Lena Janczak and I share an Instagram feed. Ethereal letters. A conversation. An exchange of ideas. Of cities. Of people. Of love.
A Street Photography journal. Urban Planning savant Jane Jacobs never really loved Los Angeles. Our legendary sprawl can make it hard to find a here here. But it also creates possibilities. The LA Metro is “behind” cities like Chicago or NYC, but those cities are physically tiny compared to the vastness that is Los Angeles. By car LA is a series of drop-ins. But it’s too vast to walk all of it. With a Metro Tap Card, a pair of Nike Air Max, and a 35mm f1.8 lens, I’m exploring as much of Los Angeles as I can.
It’s small size and long, 2.35:1 (Cinemascope) aspect ratio make the Merlino Gallery unique among the 5 galleries at the Long Beach State University School of Art. Here I collect a few of the most delicious, and installation-oriented, of the 30 exhibitions/year featured at Merlino Gallery.
Above the men’s room urinals in the Long Beach State University, Student Union are 2 chalkboards that usually feature some spontaneous opinion, vernacular expression, or drawing. This semester I am photographing these chalkboards after my Monday & Wednesday office hours.
Donald Trump’s Star on the Hollywood “Walk of Fame” is a touchstone. If you stand there for a few minutes you will see one person express deep contempt for our 45th president, and 21 seconds later another will express love. This signifier is as close as most people can get to expressing themselves to the 45th president. In a series of 52 weekly photography visits, I document the state of the star and whatever people happen to be doing there that day.
Collaboration with Ukrainian artist Irene Prokopets: What if the Terminator movies are actually documentaries? What if “Skynet” becomes sentient? How will it judge humankind? By all the hate speech online? In this project, Prokopets & I invite people to make short video Letters to Skynet explaining to our future AI overlords why humankind is a thing of value & beauty worth saving.
A day to celebrate the family of humankind.
For “Pissed Off” at Tom of Finland Foundation, I made a series of automatic drawing diptychs with artists & guests at the event. For each drawing we meditated either on “Anger & Frustration” or “Joy & Human Fulfillment”.
In 2017 I became the Jane’s Walk City Organizer for Los Angeles. I led walks in New Taipei & Venice.
Indiana artist Alyssa Arney and I were inspired/repulsed by the shameless audacity of Burger King’s fractal foodenstein mashup “Mac ‘n Cheetos”. We curated an exhibition focusing on shame, repulsion, and capitalist over-consumption run amok.
For my portion of Philosophy in the Bedroom with Sheree Rose, Rhiannon Aarons and Martin O’Brien, I brought 4,000, 1-inch-diameter, orange, cheese balls and performed a monologue about the perils of green food.
With Instagram, perhaps there are no roads less traveled. And if we’re on well-travelled roads, do we really need to take the same pictures over and over?