enoughforall

interesting article about how many critics who praise brokeback mountain are actually forcing the gay-ness of the story back into the closet. it’s frightening to think of praise as negatively affecting something, taking away while it gives. but at least people are talkin’

perhaps it was the late hour of the night but reading about the “hoax“ surrounding author JT Leroy was quite confusing… i have never read the books but apparently the world was lead to believe they were written by a young man with a crazy past…it turns out the author is a fictional character created by an older woman. So, in my confusion i went to amazon and read some reviews of Leroy’s books and found these scathing denouncements from people who felt tricked…. in some ways i want to say that the book isn’t total crap just cause it wasn’t written by who you thought it was (i’m not even sure if the book is classified as fiction or non) but the more i looked into the story the wierder it got… like some other woman posing as the young, gender confused Leroy and then perhaps the most baffling is that the “real” author of the books will not admit that Leroy is made up, and there is even a blog written by “Leroy” with strange testimonials from random celebrities stating that Leroy is in fact a real person…

anyone who’s read any JT Leroy care to weigh in?

circa 2005

somewhere along the line
i became obsessed with hanging things
sculptures and bodies mostly…

but always hung in such a way
to leave you guessing…

is the figure willingly suspended,
content to give over to the ties that bind him,
or has he been ensnared against his will?

or are the rope-like elements
an extension of the body itself,
some sort of cocoon-ish device
to preserve the body in
suspended animation?

circa 2001

these lovely ladies were
born during a exceptionally
boring history class.

maybe it was
all the times we saw
charlie’s angels
at the campus theater…

these scantily-clad
superheroines
ran rampant, kicking and flipping
their way through the few
half-hearted history notes
in my notebook

what did they care about
the russian revolution?
they had a mission to perform
and to look good doing it.

saw the warhol show at the corcoran
thru my brand new glasses
and liked what i saw.

there was an appropriate balance
of fame, death and pure color…
even some glittery shadow studies
loved his penmanship and gold leaf laying
in some of his commercial work
and drooled over drawings and dolly p.

then i just read this article about the
Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board,
a committee with the final say in
the authenticity of any Warhol piece.
which just brings up the age-old issue
of Warhol’s mass-production techniques…

but i think he would love the idea
of this elite, mysterious group that
has the final say in what makes a “Warhol”
the name that became a product
and haunts the halls of art history
making us question everything.

As it turns out, i’m in the Abstract Art show at MOCA DC.
i was waiting to be accepted to a non-juried show…
but i delivered two pieces to the gallery tonight
and they “practically hung themselves.”

So if you are ambling around Georgetown Friday night,
do drop in at the MOCA DC gallery tucked back in Canal Square.
There’s an opening from 6-9pm.

As an added bonus, i found out a fellow 52 O Street artist,
Micheline Klagsbrun Frank has a few pieces in the show as well.

circa 2003

these were my first sketches
of what was to be
my biggest sculpture yet.

i wanted to design a sculpture
to fit right into a corner of the gallery
and really loom over the viewer
in an exciting/off-putting way

the inspiration for the work
came from a Richard Serra piece
titled corner prop in which a
block of steel is propped up in a corner
by a single metal pole at an angle.
the arrangement makes you feel uneasy
but fascinated at the same time.
Here is an example of another of Serra’s prop pieces.

i wanted to invoke the same feelings
using bright colors and organic forms,
things that you wouldn’t expect
to take you off balance.
And played off of Serra with the title, corner pop.