Who wants some Original aRt?

YES! The day everyone has been waiting for...I'm going to sell all of my fine art Reenatypes for a crazy low price. I have several unframed, all original C-prints that need some love.

It's the ultimate recession special, especially if your walls are stark white and screaming for some imaginative quality. Check out my various reenatypes in all colors and sizes to see if you like anything.

I'll be doing inventory and posting sizes and prices for everything. They will all be a little different, even if it's the same image...the glory of originality.

Stay tuned..

First time at the Ballet!

I love all kinds of art including dance and performance, so when Max called me up and told me that him and Adam were taking me to the ballet, i was ecstatic! Adam teaches ballet and is almost at the end of his masters program, so I knew I had to be ready for some serious new information.

We arrive at Lincoln Center after having a great early dinner at Taim in the west village. There are well dressed people everywhere, getting ready to watch the newest production at the American Ballet Theater and I was getting more and more excited. This was so much better than So you think you can dance!



It was a great selection for my first experience because there were 3 different ballets in one, with an intermission between each. It was the premiere night and I felt very privileged to be able to witness art being formed right in front of me. The three ballets we saw were: Prodigal Son, Desir, and On the Dnieper, all with different styles, stories, and costumes. For someone like me that likes a little bit of everything, this was the perfect variety pack I was looking for.

Throughout the first performance, I don't think my mouth closed once. I couldn't believe that in my whole life, I have never gone to the ballet. Having lived in NYC my whole life, I was privileged to different shows, theater productions, and all kinds of expressive performance art. The ballet is something new, something I have just seen in movies or shows. Nothing can prepare you for how amazing this well crafted artistry is in person.

Adam was so full of knowledge and I was so happy to soak it all up. Next up: SWAN LAKE!!!

More books

Here are some more of my hand made journals I've made in the past couple of years. I wish I had taken photos of them before using, but at least they withstood all the wear and tear.

My hand made books

I've been making hand made books and my own journals for about 4 years. Here are some of the ones that started it all:

This was an early book representing the progression of time. I took photos of an apple from the beginning through every bite until the end when it's just a core. I chose decorate paper that would help illustrate this idea. Sew with the regular Coptic stitch.

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This is a closed spine book, more along the lines of a regular hardcover book.

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Another Coptic stitch book, this one is only 2 inch by 1 1/2 inch!

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Even smaller at only 1 inch by 1 inch is this accordion fold out book. It looks like a normal little book, but if you take out the holder in the spine, the whole thing accordions out.

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Another regular Coptic stitch, but the paper covering the book was made by...yep, me! It also has a recessed window in the front if you wanted to put a plate or photo there. (none shown)

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For a major project, I custom made a photo book for myself that I could bring to the darkroom. When I do my photography, I have to write a ton of information down in a neat and orderly fashion. With the book i customized for my particular process, it made things run a lot smoother. I used the hard cover binding method here to give my the most coverage and durability.

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Inspired by "Army of Darkness", I made the Necronomicon, a book of the dead, bound in flesh and written in blood. It's pretty hard to come by flesh these days and I did want to book to be somewhat archival, so I found a paper that looked just flesh. Around this time is when i decided to go explore more obscure stitching techniques when I came upon the Caterpillar stitch. It looked like veins going through the board, binding it all together. Creepy, cool and perfect. Once I learned this stitch, it quickly became my favorite.

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A small Caterpillar stitch, pocket size. Once a stitch is learned, there are endless possibilities of what can be done. I always try to make something different, see what happens.

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This was a functional journal that I made, one of many to come. The Caterpillar stitch was my favorite for a while, still may be, but it's difficult to do.

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This was a gift I made for someone. That was one of the reasons i continued to make books, for giving them as special gifts. Books are extremely hard to make, they take a lot of blood, sweat and tears, but there is nothing like that one of a kind gift that leaves someone feeling completely special. It's worth it.
I worked very hard on these covers giving them a psychedelic feel while still remaining feminine with the pink velvet material. Once again I used the coptic stitch, always neat, secure and classic.

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Williamsburg, BK

A night out in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to see Alkaline Trio at the Music hall of Williamsburg.

The very hip scenery of Williamsburg.







We ate at this awesome little restaurant called Sweetwater. It had a nice outdoor seating area and the weather was just right.


The Music Hall of Williamsburg is a great venue to see shows, this was my first time seeing Alkaline Trio there, which rocked my socks off.

Art in SPAHA

Walking through the hood...







My rendition of De LaVega's rendition of Picasso's "Guernica".

Cork Project

Last year I had one of my crazy ideas to transform my coffee table by making it have a cork top. Since I worked in a restaurant and had access to many corks from my wine classes, I decided it wouldn't be that hard to collect enough for the project. Well, I collected WAY too many and the cork table didn't seem like such a good idea anymore.

So there I was with around 1000 corks littering my apartment. I needed to get crackin on some projects. My first project was a very useful one, a cork board, a pretty obvious choice.



Not bad, only hundreds of more corks to put to use. One rainy night, I took a portion of my corks and dragged them to Astoria where I convinced my friend Jenn to create yet another project. Having collected these corks for a while, i had a couple of ideas, one of which was realized on this night.



Work in progress. The bottom was hand cut individual rings by Jenn.



The finished product






Signed by the artists. A hand made wine bottle holder, perfect for maintaining temperature and decorating your cheap bottle of wine.

SOHO art show

I will never turn down an opportunity to go to an opening reception of an art show. The space is usually buzzing with energy from the proud artists and viewers drunk on free cocktails. This gallery was in SOHO, which is an Awesome part of the city, mainly for it's charming character, various old school graffiti, and unaffordable stylish boutiques.

The Gallery appeared very small from the outside, but actually weaved in pretty far. The artwork was cluttered on the wall, the floor, in the corners, just about anywhere it would fit. I cringed when i saw people putting their half filled red wine glasses inches from someones artwork. Ah, se la vie! They were Brazilian and having a great time, singing and dancing, welcoming everyone.

Pregnant Barbie

This looks like is took a long time

While passing a store filled with the newest craze from kidrobot, called the munny. I've seen this curious toy before but never saw the point of it. I still don't.

And my accomplice for the night:

The McDonaldization of ART

What is it about something unique and original that appeals to me so much? It's a one of a kind, a diamond in the ruff, something that can not be replicated. I guess I always felt like I was different from the rest, so why shouldn't my art reflect that? Going digital and moving further away from fine art is like joining the herd, doing what "they" tell you and how. Making countless identical reproductions, each printout carefully calibrated, calculated and customized to do produce the same result, every time.

Part of the art world (and of course our society) has gone though a process called McDonaldization, basically, you want to know exactly what you're going to get as fast as possible.

Ritzer highlighted four primary components of McDonaldization:
Efficiency, Calculability, Predictability, and Control. His book, "The McDonaldization of Society" does an excellent job of explaining how we are progressing or regressing, how ever you would like to look at it. For me, there has to be a balance somewhere in the equation, one of my beliefs being the yin and yang theory, there is good and bad in everything. As we hurry along wanting quantity over quality, we lose something in the process...VALUE.

So why is it so wrong for me to want the quality over the quantity? I've been fighting that question for a long time and now I just don't know anymore. If you can't beat them, join them...

MOO!

Older illustrative portraiture

I guess I should have listened when the Director of Photography at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco told me to do fashion photography instead of fine art. My illustrative portraiture at the time was creative with a weird enough twist to be fashion. I had the lighting, processing and developing skills topped with this style which he thought would catch on.

Well I didn't listen and now looking back, I'm wondering what would have happened, had I taken that route. I would have never made the reenatype. Sometimes I have creative illustrative ideas like these, but am limited due to equipment. Maybe I'll go back to my ghetto set up.