drawing – IT IN Place

The Shining

alex — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 22:56:46 +0000

Gearing up to start a Residency at 17 frost from Nov, thru Jan. Most of the work will be of a narrative and more or less figurative nature, so I’ve been drawing abstracts in the spirit of contrariness. I’ve never shown a lot of my abstract work, but I never stop making it. I guess I’m afraid that even the best abstract paintings (like Kline and DeKooning and Twombly) sort of end up as decorations/trophies for rich idiots. They can sort of drift into the background and be ignored. I guess you can ignore Mozart too, so it shouldn’t matter, but then I never wanted to be Mozart, I wanted to scream and rock. Still abstraction is my first love and my favorite work to look at or make

Cog Studies.

alex — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 21:27:22 +0000

More thoughts on cog sculptures

Taxi BQE

alex — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 15:24:29 +0000

I was coming home in the taxi when I called you and you were already home and getting ready for bed and so I hung up and asked the cab driver where he was from originally and he said, “Egypt” and so we spoke of pyramids, and the Old Testament, and Islam, and Israel and Palestine and terrorism and when we’d exhausted all that we spoke of dogs. He said his pit bull was having a bad allergic reaction to something in the Autumn air, or ground. His skin was all inflamed and the dog took to licking its paws to try and stop the itch. The dog’s paws were now a bloody mess and he’d scratched his belly raw in great spasms of back leg sharp claw digging. They had to put the dog’s head in a huge plastic cone.

“Space Dog,” I said

“Yes, like a space dog, exactly.”

It was nice to agree on something and we whisked through the Brooklyn night home to where I pet the dogs and checked their paws just to be on the safe side.

7 Spades

alex — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 18:38:53 +0000

Here is an animated gif of a sort of Palimpsest I made with a card Double_You mailed me from London. It was a seven of spades. I threw in some collage from the last time we drew IRL in Paris. Now I think I’m meant to mail it back to him? But first some digital collage below:

Muses Musing

alex — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 20:15:29 +0000

Some drawings from the end of a sketchbook.

Abyss

alex — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 19:37:25 +0000

Plop plop fizz fizz, the snowball melts back to the skull and sinks into the briny depths.

Donyo Was A Rolling Stone

alex — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 15:59:59 +0000

Or actually a dislodged skull turned snowball rolling down a mountain…

Below the tree line and into the valley below.

Dird

alex — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 01:47:41 +0000

PAX

Cog

alex — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 19:42:25 +0000

Playing with the Wakum pad to make an erased animation. Starting with the cog….. see where it goes from there.

Learning To Sleep Alone

alex — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 04:05:34 +0000

it ain’t easy but it is

The Attic of My Mind

alex — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 20:40:35 +0000

Lots of junk and unfinished construction.

Voices

alex — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 20:40:01 +0000

What was a whisper…

Dark

alex — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 19:24:27 +0000

When the lights go out here, they really go out and I find myself in nothing with my arms out searching for a wall.

Miss Me?

alex — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:59:05 +0000

I have been away for too long, mostly sitting like this. I want to stand up again.

Distant Smiles

alex — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:36:21 +0000

Estragon and Vladamir

alex — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:10:43 +0000

press to see larger.

Sniff Boot, Remember Last Night

alex — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 19:42:10 +0000

Dance Think Sit

alex — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:50:00 +0000

Cry Kick Piss

alex — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:26:45 +0000

California Nostalgia

alex — Sat, 08 May 2010 00:01:47 +0000

These vids, vj together in interesting ways. Perhaps bigger than the sum of their spider parts. Finally getting around to dealing with old footage to send off to Victoria as I promised her months ago. To be fair, I told her it would probably not be till we were done with the end of Zipperhead and tomorrow is the last show. YOU SHOULD COME if you haven’t already.

You jASS

alex — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:25:30 +0000

In a white town thinking about blue music.

Sketches

alex — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 15:35:14 +0000

The Man Who Fell To Earth

alex — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:49:49 +0000

A storm system roared across Manhattan and left a strange Pernod colored sky in its wake. I ran home to try and catch the sunset. It was one of those sort of Spielberg skies where you think maybe the saucers will emerge and land on Flatbush Ave.

Les Chiens Parisean

alex — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:48:56 +0000

a video response from Monsieur Charlie et Madame Claire.

Beautiful From Behind

alex — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:48:34 +0000

A fell upon a well shod woman as I flipped along the arcades by the louvre. Her shoes echoed under the stone in the lonely night there, but when I passed her alas, she had a sort of funny face… a hook of a nose like a Falcon or an Italian queen I saw once at the Ufuzzi. It reminds me of the nostalgia I’m feeling now. I’m having these strange intensely real dreams that are filled with mundane detail of trying to accomplish rather banal tasks: where in life I’m painting and writing and drinking wine and eating and crying at some fever pitch. When I sleep, I’m getting paper clips and trying to mail a letter.

Talk To Charlie

alex — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:06:19 +0000

Paris Underground Skin

alex — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:48:05 +0000

First two collages made with U U at Café Sauvignon on the left bank. We were tearing up maps and The Little Prince.

Le Retour de Monsieur Alex

alex — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:28:41 +0000

There is a lot of media to go through now. Drawings and video and timelapses. Etc. Not certain how to procede… and there is laundry. So here is a drawing of me by U U a flicker friend I met with in Paris and spent the day jamming collage in cafés and walking around the Rive Gauche. He has some great photos and vids of our day together so follow his link. I think it’s funny that the Ricard snap has a picture of Kubrick’s ear…not the sense organ you think of when and if you think about Kubrick, but I digress. A timer shot of us at the Café Sun Ra (chosen for it’s Jazz cred name and the Bizarre snaggle toothed gangster/Bond villain looking Maitre De).

Penser

alex — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:03:21 +0000

I have my manuscripts ready for Hub and Zipper and I’ll have plenty of time to think of you, me, and everyone and everything we know… which ain’t much, but it will simply have to do. The festival is in the middle of Les Halles, the famous market area of Paris that is now a mall, or something. Anyway a place I never spent any time and right near the Louvre. I still can’t believe I’m going to Paris. Lucky fucking me. I’m bringing two copies of Le Petit Prince.

Cog Traces

alex — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:41:20 +0000

Here is one of the halfs of the cog tracing I did. These were used to protect the floor from epoxy resin stains and to have a model to recut a new cog if the epoxy some how destroyed the cog. There is another side to this but only one of the photos came out. I gave the drawing to the cog’s owner as a sort of bonus memento of the restoration.

Where Is My Mind?

alex — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:49:12 +0000

What’s he thinking? I had a whole conception of it around four something in the morning when the birds start to sing, but it’s all gone now. You tell me. The song for the night was Where Is My Mind?

Reading Totally Tenderly Tragically

alex — Tue, 26 May 2009 18:16:03 +0000

A great book by Phillip Lopate. One of the more interesting chapters involves his thoughts on “the essay film”. It turns out that’s what I’ve been trying to make without knowing it… or I mean calling it that. I’ve know his brother Leonard’s voice from WNYC radio for years. It’s nice to meet more of the family. Strangely the day I found the book, I heard Phillip’s name mentioned three times in other people’s conversations and then like magic I found the book in the street. I haven’t been able to put it down. I don’t always agree with the opinions expressed, but I love how he expresses them. His style is so much more honest and coherent than all the film theory crap I had to read in college.

Up Past the Dawn

alex — Sun, 24 May 2009 23:34:47 +0000

Seen too many mornings.

Crowds in Motion Stay in Motion

alex — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:16:33 +0000

I was thinking about scale as I tried to deinstall the large crowd drawings to put safely away in Storage and then the wind from the new ceiling fans moved the huge sheets of paper like they were napkins on the bar. We’ve been doing a bit of spring cleaning at 17 Frost in prep for the last show of the season: Ricaro Deoliveira. Tonight is the opening. Swing by for a drink and some art and video…see the new walls and bar and fans and floors etc.

As all these repairs took place, I had to hide the Frost mini studio and work at home where I’ve been finishing a few movie themed poster drawings to ship to my friend in Portland. I had a funny coincidance yesterday while taking a long walk to Williamsburgh. The Replacements song Portland came up on my ipod just as I was thinking about the city of Portland. I sang to myself, “It’s too late to turn back, here we go. Portland oh no…” when I noticed I was looking at a sign for the Portland Cafe and Then I looked up at the street sign: Portland Avenue. I’ve walked it many times, never noticed it’s name. It was an uncanny moment. Everything’s coming up Portland green. Must be all the rain.

Alexpagne

alex — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:34:46 +0000

My flickr friend Jerry Waese drew this portrait of me based on a frame from this video. What a nice gesture I thought. A great birthday gift among many.

Puddle Wonderful

alex — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:07:14 +0000

mixed on paper 22″x30″ 2009 and playing with my new HV 30 HD cam.

The Queen, The Prince, and The Fool

alex — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:58:06 +0000

Spring and the little flowers start to bloom all over. Sometimes the rational side of our minds has no idea what the crazy, dream making, creative side is up to. But long ago those pagans gave us a day (today) in which to let the old mind unify in a happy, jokey, festival of foolishness. Remember the fool is always the wisest one in Shakespeare. Speaking of The Bard, there’s a nice post on a blog called Bardbox about an old video of mine: My Dinner With André The Giant.

The End of the Meal

alex — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:39:31 +0000

I was over at Frost Street last night working out a Narration idea with the fellas in Sineparade when the trinity collaboration crew of the next show showed up (Akaash Nihalani, Posterboy, and Ellis Gallagher). No one was quite sure when they were going to, but they did, so suddenly I was rushing to photograph some things and start tearing down the walls. I’m trying to document the dissolve from one show to the next and so far the video looks good, but I’m holding off to see what today brings. Here’s the big trinity of eaters that I shot yesterday. Press the image to see it large.

Long Gone Train

alex — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:39:20 +0000

One of the first Artists I met in New York, Richard Heinsohn, came up from Nashville (where he beat a retreat from the cruel and fickle New York Art World to concentrate on his guitar and songs). He was up to visit our old Gallery gather some new paintings from a recent show there and play a couple of gigs in Dumbo. He stopped by Frost Street with our Buddy Major Tom Drum to see my show and collaborate on the long scroll…. and you know…. drink beer. Dave was practicing and the P.A. was up and the mikes hot and the nylon string classical guitar tuned up (not Richard’s normal instrument) and I asked Richard to play us a song then. I haven’t heard him in a few years and clearly Nashville has been good to his music. It’s nice to see someone grow in their talent over time. If you click on his name at the start of this post, you can check out his recent paintings too. We agreed that the key to life as an artist is: not to die.

Over ThinKing

alex — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:54:52 +0000

I’m trying not to do that, but I am trying to simplify what’s on the wall at Frost Street and what I’ll be showing for the screening. It is exhibition as subtractive process… throw it all on the wall and then figure out what you don’t need.

Love Plus Zero No Limit

alex — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 15:33:06 +0000

Wishing you a Happy Valentine’s Day. I’ll be doing a screening Sunday Febuary 22nd at 3pm at 17 Frost Street. I’m toying with the idea of making Lolita the invite/movie poster. It might be the only way I get it together for SuperTrash anyways.

Pratt Fall Into Love

alex — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:32:49 +0000

Spring sprung for a brief February moment and I decided to run through the Pratt campus. It made me nostalgic for university life and slightly jealous of all the art students who were climbing in trees and building geodesic domes, etc. They have a lot of great public sculpture there and I was surprised by how much of it I’d never seen before. In the studio, I worked on a long parade drawing and the next day the winds came in to town and tried to blow down Brooklyn like an angry wolf. Music is Al Green preaching about love. So happy V. day and you’d better be good to me.

A Parade of Signs

alex — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:26:08 +0000

Sineparade rehearsed last night and Aakash came by Frost Street to collaborate a bit on some stuff for the next event (Sunday Feb. 22 afternoon video screening wine and talk sort of thing). I watched the raw video while listening to bob and waiting for the L and this guy started ranting and I decided to shoot him without knowing what he was saying (I had my I pod up loud). I don’t know what his deal was… some sort of stand up preacher. Some how the video and the music and the mad man all felt meaningful.

Spilled Dog

alex — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:55:22 +0000

The other day I made this substitute dog to keep me company in the studio. It’s made out of a saw horse and a sand bag and wine soaked crate from out in front of the Lorimer Street liquor store and a stuffed squirrel dog toy tail. Bailey would have been 15 yesterday, if she was still with us. I made a quick drawing of her licking her paws on her last day and I’ve been working over it off and on ever since…. It’s wine soaked as well. Something about death is like a broken bottle spilling out all the good stuff and you are left with nothing buy shattered glass, or ashes.

Bar Singer

alex — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:48:10 +0000

Saturday was full of lasagne and parties. Felt like a twisted lounge singer. This week everything must be done.

Frost Bite That Chicken

alex — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 05:03:19 +0000

Here is the updates from Friday’s Frost Space time lapses mixed with a Mingus song by way of Dylan’s old satellite radio show. Eat that chicken yes! Also some motion graphics made by a student of Golan Levin. The Eater is eating all sorts of heads I made over the years that they got off Flickr. I find this one thematically appropriate to the the first course of Frost Street… Food from the fridge… or whatever it is: Revenge Served Cold? Also a dead white pigeon I saw under the BQE on the way to the studio. Looked like an angel, or a Nationalist Seal….

Opportunity Frost Bit

alex — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 07:02:04 +0000

Knocked up another large paper and ink drawing at Frost Street and then Alex, the drummer for Sine Parade showed up to practice his drums in the theater. Christ can that guy drum. My neighbor’s kid is back from college and so even at home I am living with drums all the time and then the pile drivers banging away next door at the construction site… Rhythm of life is banging on and i’m trying to bang out some paintings. I did a diptych with gloss enamel and painter’s caulk on some old oil paintings I found in the trash a few months back. I like to build my dreams on the broken dreams of others…It’s the American way….LOL weep LOL.

Also I’ve been playing with installation and making new works to tie up the old works. The skull is my memento mori I made on day one… it is a painter’s tradition to make a death painting to guard the studio from death… like a gargoyle or a feng shuai mirror….or a pug dog, or a gun, or whatever.

Frost Bite Bit

alex — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:00:15 +0000

Second day at Frost Street was mostly about moving some of my older work from home and storage… it was fairly comical and thanks be to Major Tom for his hatch back and strong back and so a lot of things I haven’t seen for a couple of years came out of cold storage… like all my old fridge doors. I can’t resist showing the fridges in a place called frost… and the frigid air, etc. They look good and match perfectly with the new ones. When I went outside, the sky was full of “chemtrails”, or contrails, or whatever. It looked positively surreal.

Fetch

alex — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:24:04 +0000

Not knowing what else to do with the passing time, We decided to put up the tree and give Bailey the best 48 hours we could. She ate steak and two bags of treats and then we took her to the park one last time before she left. She hasn’t been able to play much fetch the last two years, but It was like those stories you hear about sick musicians coming to life one last time on the stage before they die… that’s the way she played fetch… like it was the most important thing in the world….

So even though I feel like something huge has been taken away from me, I’m confident she’ll find a way to bring it back.

A Boy And His Dog

alex — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 06:09:00 +0000

We’ve set a day that I am calling Easter Monday after one of my favorite deKooning paintings. She has survived for two years with the cancer, but it now seems that there is the question of doing what is best for her. I can’t imagine her ever leaving our side by choice, but it is no good for her to live in pain. I wouldn’t wish cancer on my worst enemy.

I’ve drawn bailey a lot over the years, but I’ve never really caught her they way I would want to remember her and today I realized I only have three days to figure out how to paint her and so I set about doing some sketches.

All the time seems to be lapsing and I want to record every moment of her: It’s more like surveillance than photography. Time is the thing and the other day I was trying to take the piss out of Jim Morrison’s Poetry and Rock and Roll ambition in general, and my friend shot me doing a fake Lizard King Sermon, but now with Radio Head’s Haunting Song: Exit Music (for a film) it doesn’t seem like a joke anymore. I feel so helpless against mortality. What kind of master can’t master eternity?

Oedipus Schmedipus

alex — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:51:42 +0000

It’s all fun untill…
I made this cartoon while watching the first season of Mad Men on DVD. Seems all they do is drink and smoke, so I guess that’s how this came about.

Map of The World

alex — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:47:23 +0000

Much of my plotting and planing on Hub seems to relate to this map my father drew. To understand it, watch this. My mom dug it up for me and I thought I’d share it with you.

Thinking of Airplanes

alex — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 17:21:51 +0000

I spent a lot of time last night watching Bergman films and thinking about a visual sequence for the first hub story. I think of this first story as a small test beta to see if it is worth doing the whole hub memoir in Sophie. It has to do with flying and landing and the little bar that I went to in Paris that seemed like the center of things and was called hub and gave me the title. So maybe this first story is like a title page… or title sequence… or preface, or preamble, or something. I would pause the film (Smiles on a Summer Night) and story board a few frames and then press play, etc. I am imagining the visuals based off an old gif animation I did two years ago. It popped into my head after I watched the video below. I think my sequence could really take advantage of the layering possibilities in a Sophie book. We’ll see.

Flying from Sam Fuller on Vimeo.

The End is Nigh

alex — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:13:30 +0000

This is the last week of my show “Reading Room” at USSA. You can make an appointment and visit all week, or we’ll be having a closing party Friday, Oct. 31st: Halloween, from 6-9… Stop by before haunting the rest of the night.

Here’s a little time lapse and some stills from last friday when some friends stopped by for a visit. Sound track is the Rev. Al Green talking and rehearsing. I made this post on a sunday… and for me…Al Green is a church I can get along with.

Math Homework

alex — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:38:19 +0000

Draw a circle.

I found this sheet of math equations in the street while walking the dog around the block. It reminded me that later drafts of my “frist novel” were titled: To Walk A Circle. It was more or less about walking around all those etoilles they have in Paris that get you so lost sometimes and there is no grid by which to dead reckon your way home. Instead you go from L’Opera and walk for thirty minutes and somehow end up exatly again at L’Opera. Last time I was in Paris, I had one entire foot (my gimpy right one) turn into an enormous blister… the whole foot, one blister. For the next week I hobbled around Paris like Ratso Rizzo: Je promenne ICI! I thought it was a grand metaphor for life. Now it sounds a little pretentious, but it does explain Arc Along the Watchtower as a title too.

Maps and Legends

alex — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:45:52 +0000

Here is a drawing I did last week at Frost Street and an old collage from Paris about a decade ago. It’s made out of the sex club cards they hand you all up and down the Piagalle and a few found images and some drawings I made and some rose petals and some blood red ink. I call it Nooky Money. Too see a larger size press: here. Below is another in a series of Hub maps I’ve been drawing while actually writing a prose version of all my Hub stories. Why is it that Paris is the only place I ever like writing about?

SacrÃ© Fridge

alex — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:38:57 +0000

I started a new fridge door drawing/movie. Might as well start at the start: SacrÃ© Couer. It’s kind of raw and fucked up and will no doubt change, but I wanted to keep this as a souvenir.

First Frost

alex — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:58:28 +0000

The folks at 17 Frost Street were kind enough to give me some space to start knocking out drawings in The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince as it’s actually in French) while Aakash Nihalani installed his tape show and the band rehearsed. It was a nice way to start this new projet which I am imagining as a sort of modular, multi platform, multimedia memoir of my time at the turn of the century in Paris…

Though I hope it will be open enough to use as part of my ongoing blogging/vlogging experiment, the end result should be a fairly focused narrative electronic book.

I learned recently that they found St-Exupery’s downed plane in the sea. Not only this, but the German who shot him down came forward to own the kill. The irony was that Exupery was the Nazi pilot’s hero and had inspired him to fly in the first place. He had carried with him the fear and dread for all these years that he had shot down the writer/aviator and when they found the plane he knew from his flight log that it was his mission and his gun. Small world indeed.

Anyways the opening of Aakash’s show is thursday:

17 Frost and Bose Pacia Present: Aakash Nihalani
Thursday, October 9, 2008
7 – 10 pm

Located in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, 17 Frost, an auxiliary venue of Bose Pacia New York, will now begin hosting performance and studio arts projects. We are excited to announce the inaugural event on Thursday, October 9. Please join us as we host New York based street artist, Aakash Nihalani, who will present his impromptu and ephemeral tape installations.

Bose Pacia
508 West 26th St, 11th FL
New York, NY 10001
T: 212.989.7074
F: 212.989.6982
mail@bosepacia.com
bosepacia.com

The music here is The Replacements: Can’t Hardly Wait

Fluxed Up

alex — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:21:35 +0000

Fluxed Up from MariaNYC on Vimeo.
Wonderful documentation of my USSA show by Maria Niro with some real live fluxus (well recorded and found on Ubu Web) music and poetry: Poem Whispered History of Art / Robert Fillou
Overlaid on Symphony Natura/ Henning Christiansen.
Followed by Ground Swell solo sax by Colin Stetson

Sleeping Persona

alex — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:37:27 +0000

I lay in bed dreaming up dialog for the talking head animation and dozing off and visiting with those long dead. At least in that sense, people never really die all the way.