Friday, May 20, 2011

Seasonal transitions

Summer can't keep frontin' for long. It's so damned close, and I can tell just by the grapevine on our porch... it's leaves have burst from the vine's buds and are growing ever so rapidly. I got a couple weeks of school left and then I'ma be a free wild man. I got a job which is cake and actually enjoyable (at least thus far), and equally important, will allow allow me to not only make rent but as well have plenty of free time. And I am grateful for the shift hours, where I work throughout the night. While the majority of the people I know, if not all, retire one by one to their slumber, I am up cooking food for the restless and the inebriated. When I arrive home, they are on their last legs of sleep. When I give into delirium and submit to a demanding rest, they are beginning their day. And when I awake, I awake into the pinnacle of the day, where the sun is high and so are people. The last time I truly had this type of lifestyle, where not only could I stay up extremely late every night for my own personal enjoyment, but to fulfill my financial responsibilities, I too could be mindfully active until damn near morning. Back when I was in NYC living in Manhattan, working at bars, running on opposite hours from everyone else. This is where I am able to really get involved into art, and I can't fucking wait. I already have been working my way to this lunar schedule, and have been getting a taste of what's to come. To work with passion and haste from the day into the night, through the night, and maybe even into the sunrise, is a feeling like no other. I feel alone, and I enjoy being lonesome. Being lonesome easily puts boredom into question, and rather be consumed by it, it becomes easy to be distracted with anything but boredom. That's where I like to be. I believe people should be able to define time for themselves, so even though we run and function on some determined structure and impetus, we should as well not forget that we have what we tend to call "free time." Ha! FREE! It shouldn't be called "Free" time at all. It should be called bought time. Because the majority of society makes their money to buy a little bit of free time for themselves. But that free time is already set out like a picnic full of food and drinks for 2, but without the hassle and prep! A friend shared a link to this artist who spent 35 fucking years building a beautifully functioning diorama of San Francisco solely out of toothpicks. It works on gravity and kinetics. One can tour this 35 years of brilliance, but really it's more than that. It's timeless.
Anyway, couple of new pieces I made for some projects for school. The Obama one was done for a class, but more so for a small group show I am in at the Peoples Art Gallery of Portland, which will be up for the month in Pioneer Mall. I am curious, and excited... especially because I will be involved again with this gallery space in 2 months, but this time in more of a feature show. And we are given the opportunity to work collectively and collaboratively on an installation. Hoooo wee!



This was the other project I did for class, which is made out of two 2 dozen buckets of KFC chicken. Purchasing the chicken sucked. Touching the chicken sucked. Removing the meat from the bones sucked. Smelling the chicken sucked. KFC is like a sauna of dead chicken air and grease. Making art with it sucked. I had nothing but angst the whole time, having to touch the shit. But I ignored the angst, and just made a flag... There are no stars because we are no longer united as states of citizens... we are united as consumers through capitalism. And the food that KFC makes and sells, the spectacle it is a part of, from factory farm to marginalized families fingers, symbolizes the the type of oppressiveness we are unified by. So I took the meat, and offered it to a homeless man who was socially deranged and most likely mentally sick. And I had him eat it... I watched him eat this food within this social climate, there on the filthy side of Martin Luther King JR Blvd, seeing him savagely lace into the disgusting industrial meat, the passing cars spewing their exhaust all over us, all the while I am bummed that I spent 20 dollars on chicken that I couldn't afford to spend on anything but healthy food for myself, all to make a stupid little flag. That stupid little flag embodies all of that.

These past few days I have been trying to figure out which I like better; Indica or Sativa. I think, even though Indica is supposed to make you sleepy, I kind of enjoy the effects. Tomorrow I'll how well Sativa and I jive.


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