stickers... rolls vs. sheets

We walked around mount hood. I would recommend it. There is one place I would recommend in particular. The climb up and out of the Sandy River. It is the equivalent of standing on top of a hundred story building with no guardrail. A sloping roof. And footprint significantly smaller than its top floor. The cliff is unlike this hypothetical building, which I like to see as quite solid, in that the whole top... which looks similar to this,



feels about as secure as my bicycle lock. Gravity and Erosion walk by every day with their bolt cutters. But, luckily Chance has parked his Schwinn road-bike down the line, which Gravity eyeballs. And Erosion, being a prick, just kicks in the wheel and steals the bicycle seat.

I mean, come on Erosion. What’s a bicycle seat worth?

photo by Jake Ferrer's cellphone.

Importance of Archivality.

Oh, United States of A how good it is to be back in you. No more ridiculous electrical outlets. No more commas for decimal points. Just this morning I was able to crawl out from my blanket, slide the glass door open, slip out into a pleasantly cool morning, and pee into my parents lawn. These are all things you (Italy), won’t allow me to do. Your lawn (Italy) wouldn’t have been full of deer for instance. Maybe some of those weird antelope-esque creatures you seem to be able content your self with.

Now don’t get mad. You should remember (Italy), that your showers made my hair feel like a large Ducati riding Italian man had given me a swirly. No longer. Now my swirlied hair will be only result from not showering. And (Italy), that swirly will be administered by a varsity jacket wearing football player who climbs out of a Ford Bronco. A raised Ford Bronco. Chopped into a convertible.

Most importantly (Italy), it was your airline who lost my bright red duffel bag. Twice. I hope you’re happy. Because, you know what (Italy)... I am. I really am.

Oh No! My child vomited on my brand new laminator. What cleaning supplies should I use and what punishment is best for the child? Spanking?

(-Final Entry-) This, as you may have guessed from the parenthesized title, is my last entry for Siena. In which, not only will I be summarizing all of my feeling towards Italy and this program in which I am currently enrolled, but also one artist of my choosing. Exciting.

Ghada Amer is ridiculous. Full on unbelievable. There’s a reason I have seen her work three times in the last month an a half. Once in Seattle. Once at the Bienalle. And one final time at the MACRO gallery in Rome. Their was a lot of it in Rome. A whole floor of the place. Four rooms. More work than I could shake a fist at. Not that I would want to.

The initial draw comes from her recognition of canvas as a fabric. Her lines are stitched not painted (excepting of course those lines that are painted). Repetitious, patterned, images turn the canvas into an embroidered blanket that reads like a painting. The excess of thread ends hanging from the paintings make sure you know what you’re looking at. There’s no attempt to make the thread look like brushwork. Because, well, it’s thread. Why should it look like anything else? The sexual imagery of the works is contrary to the method of their production. We are forced to reconcile the imagery with the very apparent means. Despite all of these things, her work is so good that I have a hard time putting my finger on exactly what it is that makes me like it so much... and not just because of the security guard eyeballing me the whole time.

I have a hard time saying her work is anything but good. It is solid, put together, thought out, ridiculous. Good. Undeniably some of the best work I have seen in the last... ever.

On the whole the last month has gone fairly smoothly. Collaborating with 16 other people was a little work. The first half of the trip established a nice base for the group to work from. For the group as a whole to experience so much contemporary work at the Bienalle was helpful in giving everyone a similar background. As with my other collaborative experience of this size it opens up possibilities that would not be executable individually. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the work comes together back in Eugene. I got to make the poster for the gallery show. I was excited. Very excited. I think the text still needs some tweaking, but this is where it’s at right now.

Know your rubber, stamp horror stories.

(-Article-) The “stories to be told while walking,” I feel were the best indicator of the change of our spacial conception of the world. Where Aborigines try to keep alive multi-generational traditional walking stories, that require days to fully tell, while travel time is reduced to a small fraction of the appropriate time. The stories are still told while traveling, but rapidly sped up, condensed, and harder to grasp to an outsider.

The only way the stories are kept in their original form is at night, while they are recited in order for them to be remembered. The reverse here, where the traveling has become less real than the recitation of the old stories, has taken place over a relatively short period of time. In such a short period a culture cannot change as fast as new forms of transportation or systems of roads take to implement. There is a trade of speed for culture. A trade that doesn’t seem ideal by any means.

Paper of the week. Flower patterned!

Rome was good. Unfortunately a little too big to experience in two days. It was full of very large things. I’m still a short of an explanation for the Pantheon. It’s an aberration of epic proportions. How that thing is two thousand years I have no idea.

Also, thumbs up, no one was stabbed or stepped on a hypodermic needle. The area around our hotel had several large trees. That is to say, it was shady. Like a red wood forest. Don’t get me wrong, I could have spent a lot more time in Rome. I just would have needed to work on my dodging skills.

Why permanent marker is really the only marker choice you can make.

(-Sistine Chapel-) The Sistine Chapel is a little overwhelming. Unfortunately, this has very little to do with the paintings. Walking into the sistine chapel is like making the mistake of jumping into a crowded wave pool. Imagine though that the shallow end you’re being pushed towards only has one small ladder to exit. People keep jumping into the deep end because they’re just so excited. Everyone is screaming the whole time. OH MY GOD THIS CHAPEL IS SO MUCH FUN. They’re smashing into you. Elbows are flying, some old man loses his toupee, and the life guard is blowing his whistle for everyone to stop yelling because this is a Holy Wave Pool. I hope you’re having fun.

The frescoes are nice though. Michelangelo certainly knew what he was doing. It’s interesting to look from one end to the other. Stylistically they’re very different. A small stiff man on one end is paired with a gigantic, moving (not literally), man and his very large fish. The fish alone is more interesting than the small man. I guess as you paint the entirety of a ceiling of the course of years your paintings would change. His shift to exaggeration nearing full on mannerism is presumably preferable to a shift to sloppy.

This says something about his methods as well. The architectural elements of the painting reflecting the architecture of the room, creating a sort of grid that runs the length of the ceiling, leaves no doubt that it was considered before the changing characters. These differing stylistic choices fit into place because of this pre-planning. The most important choices were made while the figures were still not considered.

How to protect your most valuable possessions (scrapbooks); a review of fire/water proof safes.

(-Villa Borghese-) Bernini, it’s safe to say, is good at what he does. His attention to detail is so intense that it gives the figures a cartoonish exaggerated appearance. Which I like. It’s nice. That’s where it stops. His craft is top notch. Maybe even top shelf. But that’s about it.

His work is of the same thing that artists have been sculpting/painting/etch-a-sketching for well over a thousand years before him. With a few exceptions, the renaissance art we viewed progresses in terms of skill, not content. But, with something so enticing, I have a hard time saying that this is bad. In fact I’m okay that his work stops at the visual. It’s just so nice looking. There’s always one little thing left to look at.