Maximianus I Ae Follis, 305 A.D. London Mint. Choice, good VF.

Pretty sweet roman coin. You can get it for 450 bucks at Nemisis ancient coins. Here is the link, click here.

Poker

I play poker sometimes, and I like to watch poker on tv. There is a website kind of like youtube that just plays poker stuff called pokertube. This clip is an interview with Daniel Negreanu where some punk starts giving him a hard time and Daniel pushes the guy backwards into a pool that is behind them. Pretty funny.

Two Prickly Hair on Your Arm Musical Clips

I heard about this clip while listening to WNYC radiolab. It is a clip of Gregory Warner playing a Johnny Cash song to a crowd of Afghanis and getting a really amazing response. Gregory won a competition that allowed him to travel anywhere in the world to work as a journalist, he chose Afghanistan, and he brought his accordian. Turns out many Afghanis were familiar with western songs because a Afghani pop star from the 70s, Ahmad Zahir, used many western melodies to create songs that are still very popular. If you listen to the Radiolab podcast you will find out that it likely Zahir was assasinated by the Communist government in Afghanistan in the 80s.

I personally enjoyed this clip because I was a soldier in Afghanistan, and if I have the authority or the power to say one thing about the Afghanis is that they are people. I know that sounds ridiculous, you say: Of course they are people Bill, but I counter: do you think of them as people who are important and equal to people from other places. I think not, because these people have been dehumanized in the media, and that dehumanization is most disheartening for someone like me and the guys in my unit who got to know and became friends with Afghanis.

I enjoyed this clip because you can not fail to see their perfect humanity.

This is a clip I found on Blogginbindoggins, and he found on Yiekes.

Bought some Roman coins on Ebay with my blogging money

Bought these five coins in an Ebay auction, paid with money I made on this blog through advertising.

Trip

Freebie

I belong to a lot of email groups that discuss, barter, and sell ancient coins. I just read one of the newsletters, and Kevin who runs Noble Roman Coins, is giving away a free download of a 250 page powerpoint about cleaning ancient coins. I know that it is not everyones cup of tea, but here it is, click here. I have read the first 45 pages, and it is good, the advice is well organized and thorough.

If you do not know I wrote a pretty popular guide to ancient roman coins on ebay, click here. I wrote the guide during my last semester of grad school in Iowa, so that was in 2006, the information on pricing is out of date mostly due to the bad exchange rate with the Euro.

New Paintings, The Thinking Maps

Elephant Paints Self Portrait

At first I did not think this was real. How did they get the Elephant to paint a picture of an elephant, and does it understand what it is doing?

Best Link I Have Ever Found

Click Here

It is a Japanese girl's face who follows your cursor arrow with her eyes, and makes beguiling expressions.

Click Here

I found this animation on Pushapixel.

Air Guitar

I read the first few essays in Dave Hickeys Air Guitar today, and he really struck a chord with me that previous readings had not.

When Hickey writes about the small stores that serve as places where people exchange things they love for money, but really they exchange these beloved things for the privilege of talking about them with other interested parties, it seemed true. I feel like that may be true. I have a prejudice against the idea of money. I much prefer things to money, and I prefer ideas to things. In my Utopia I would not live in a futuristic jungle with a treetop house made from biodegradable plastic sheets that capture solar power, my Utopia would be having a situation where I would not have to worry about this primate body and could live in a world purely made up of ideas and images. Maybe with my entire personality existing on a tiny computer chip, that had access to all the information available anywhere to that point: I would exist as the tiniest physical presence and roam the most massive world available, economy at its best. Just thinking about things at my leisure. I guess that is what the internet is like, but unfortunately I have to be in a human body. I think eventually they will make technology that allows people to become machines, and that the people who remain people will be left behind while the machine people spread through the Universe like dandelion seeds.

Wow, that took a turn I did not see the previous paragraph taking.

I have had different escapist fantasies my whole life. The two most recurring are one where I bike across country on a ten speed bicycle with a back pack and one of those little one person tents. The other is finding some independent income and then going off the grid living in a Winnebago, parking it at truck stops, state parks, Wal Marts, and Casinos.

A close third is a house boat, but I am not sure if I would get sea sick or not so this never gets that far as a fantasy.

Infamous Elmer and Abigail

Here is Elmer jumping over another dog he was playing with in Grenada.

Abigail and Elmer, this is when we just had brought Abbie home and she was a shy puppy.

Abbie and Elmer taking a break after destroying the house.

Dogs

My dogs relieved themselves on the carpet this morning, somehow they broke out of the bedroom and made it to the dining room. Once in the dining room they went on a romp that involved bathroom stuff, digging garbage out of the garbage pail, and finding a peach with the pit and smooshing all the red peach juice into the carpet.

I am so used to the dogs being crazy that I could not even get that angry.

I spent all day cleaning the carpets, so no painting today. I rented a rug doctor at the super market and scrubbed everywhere, including the staircases. I still have to finish my taxes too, ugh.

It was a good feeling to get all the carpets cleaned up. I also cleaned the carpet in the basement. Now if I can finish the taxes tonight I will have the weekend cleared up for painting time.

No new art stuff happened today.

New Blog, Eastern Europe in English

I found an eastern European art blog, written in English.

It was found through the Neo Rauch entry on the wikipedia, it was the first link.

Click Here to go check out: MuseumZeitraum Leipzig

Leipzig is where Neo Rauch paints, and there is a whole loose affiliation of artists called the Leipzig school (schule). Pierogi 2000, the Brooklyn based contemporary art gallery has also recently set up a new shop in Leipzig. So this blog may be a good one to watch.

Palettes

This is the palette I used:




To make this painting:


This is the first oil painting I made in a new attempt to make paintings in one sitting. I am planning on making another painting tomorrow, a landscape.

Beautiful Day

It was a beautiful day here, 74 degrees and sunny with a nice breeze, the air smelled nice too.

I spent the day catching on paperwork. We are looking for new car insurance, and I have to file taxes, and I have to finish writing my syllabus for the summer class I am teaching. The most exciting thing is thinking about the class, and I hope I can get some artists to visit and talk to the class, maybe the school will give me a few hundred dollars to pay as honorariums.

My plan is to paint all day tomorrow. I am going to paint a landscape with unatural colors, and stick a figure and maybe a small shack into it somehow. I like the slightly derelict boat my neighboor has up on blocks in his backyard, that may make the cut too.

I have included a picture of Nibbs, my longtime pet. Nibbs loves to be combed with her special cat comb. She is a lucky black cat.

Fell Asleep on the Subway

I fell asleep on the subway.

It was on the R train going from Brooklyn to Manhattan, and it is a kinda long ride as subway rides go, maybe 20 minutes.

When I woke up I didn't know where I was for a second: weirdly shaped, brightly lit underground chamber. My mind flashed to thoughts of being buried alive like the characters on CSI or Bones. It was a short lived feeling, because the trains are labeled so you can see where you are going and I remembered pretty quickly.

So I closed down Pearl Paint getting two small canvases to make oil paintings. Pearl closes at 7pm, and I am always hustling to get there before the class I teach at night starts at 830. Luckily the school has a library for me to spend the hour in between the time when Pearl Paint closes and my class begins.

Forum Gallery:
Forum Gallery was a big deal to me when I was learning to paint. They basically showed the strongest group of realist painters in America.

I used to love Forum Gallery, because they showed Scott Prior (who I briefly worked for in the late 90s) and Gregory Gillespie. Now Gregory has passed on and Scott doesn't show there anymore. So I lost my personal connection to the place, but I guess they still show Jane Lund who I met a few times when I worked in Northampton Mass. Anyways I think I may go and see what they have up on the walls this Saturday.

Bought an Ancient Coin

First ancient coin purchase in a while, but it was a great deal at 20 bucks. A soter megas coin, soter megas roughly translates as: king huge.

This is the website I bought it from: http://www.ancientcoinstore.com/ It is run by a retired art prof, who draws and cleans ancient coins. He is well known on all the yahoo groups for being a big advocate for electrolysis cleaning of ancient coins.

The top pic is the king brandishing a weapon, and the bottom is the king on horseback. It is an Indo-Greek coin, which means that it is from the Afghanistan/Pakistan region and was from a kingdom heavily influenced by the Greeks (Macedonians really) that came in the wake of Alexander the Great travelling through those lands.

I have a pretty substantial collection of Indo-Greek, Indo-Kushan, and Sassanian coins. Their initial locations span from Pakistan through Afghanistan and into modern Iran. I like seeing how ancient cultures used symbols to present themselves to the population. Coins are an interesting object from ancient time, because they did not have any mass communication like tv or radio, or even printing, so coins were used as propaganda and as tools for the state to project an image of power, hence a name like King Huge.

I knew a guy in Afghanistan whose name was Bacha Khan, which means King King, he was a pretty funny guy, and if you gave him a couple extra bucks he would buy neat souvenirs in the local markets for us to send home. I sent my dad two rhinestone hats that Bacha Khan got for me from the bazaar.

I am really into Corot

This past week I have been really into Corot, the French 19th century painter.

I especially like his landscpaes, the way he painted trees is the best, because it is a complete illusion and it is also a simplification that reads more clearly than if you tried to copy the image of the tree literally.
Here are some links to Corot.

Click here (wiki)

Click here (the met, you have type Corot into the search box)

Click here

What is this blog about?

This blog is mostly about art. Which includes but is not limited to drawing, painting, sculpture, video, music, book arts, zines, photography, coins, and animation.

The post I am most proud of is an interview with Kevin Hooyman.

It is also about stuff that happens to me, whatever, things that are interesting enough to remember at the end of the day. Usually they are vaguely art related, like something I did with other art people.

It is also a way for me to make a few bucks, you may notice some links on my posts that are not art related, well, I am just trying to get by.

I have some pretty interesting stuff to write about, because I have recently moved to NYC, and I work for a prominent artist and install shows at a big Chelsea gallery. It is exciting to me.

Journally Kind of Entry, Grenada, War, Painting

Things are going pretty good here, I saw a few of my friends from Iowa last night, and got to hand out with Laur in the city. The show I helped install at Postmasters went off without a hitch, and looked super.

I guess having seen my friends from school made me a little nostalgic, and I started thinking about the four months I lived in Grenada after I got back from being in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

People who come back from war have problems adjusting back to normal life, and I was not any different. I had a lot of symptoms of PTSD, but they have faded over time. Initially I could not fall asleep at night, because I felt that someone should be on guard duty. So my sleeping habits were pretty crazy, and then later in Iowa when I lived by myself in a studio apartment while I was finishing my masters degree I would stay awake for three days at a time, until I finally went to the VA hospital and the doctors there gave me some good sleeping pills.

My coin collecting has died down a little, because I am trying to be less frivolous with my spending, and making art is expensive. When I go to Pearl Paint I can spend between 10 and 150 dollars. So I have been cutting back on the coins, and books too. But I am planning on buying at least three books soon, one on Luc Tuymans, one on Giorgio Morandi, and if I can find a good book on Corot I would like one on him also.

I am getting back into image making in a way that I have not really been since undergrad, I am feeling strongly about it, and I am making better drawings and paintings. I have started to figure out that I need to work in a marathon session to start a painting or drawing, and then I can come back to it in smaller work sessions, but the first one should be at least 8 hours.

Think I may go get a sandwich, and then clean up the backyard a little, and then I am going to paint.

Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung

Laurie and I went to the opening at Postmasters for Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung (and here is another site of his, look for the well-enter button) tonight, we met up with Cece Cole at Taxter and Spengemann and then headed over. Our friend Gianna's husband Scott Olson has the current show up at Taxter and Spengemann.

The show at Postmasters, Residential Erection, is a very interesting and provocative show. It is an interesting show for several reasons: the scale of the artworks, the tremendous presentation, and that the art is political, and is based on current events. It also represents the confusion and conflation of popular culture with politics, and does a great job putting the whole political scene into perspective.

The main room had two enormous sculptures that were based on the format of pop up books, and populated by the characters from the current American presidential election. One super interesting thing Tin-Kin did was to label each candidate with the corporate donors to their campaigns in a way that makes them read as tattoos. Which is funny in several ways, because most supporters (I predict) would be defensive, and it is also funny because they are branded by the brands that support them.

Bird Drawings

Long Day

I just had a long day, it was a good day too though. I fell off a ladder, that was the low point. But the artwork that is worth more than my yearly salary was securely on the hanging bar when I fell, that was the high point. As I was falling I was wondering if I would have to pay them back for the art, or if their insurance would cover it, haha.

I got up a little bit late, and had to drive to the next train station to catch my train. When I got to the city I could not get into the place where I was going. So I walked around, and went over to Printed Matter and picked up a pretty cool comic book called: The Drips, it is by a guy I previously blogged about, Taylor McKimens, and another book: Your Brick Shrapnel Hit My Face, by Noel Troll Freibert, and it has a really great fold out cover, the main thing I can tell it is about is a very sexual frog cartoon.

One thing I have been learning since I moved to NYC is how to write, and how to think in terms of ideas other people will find interesting, and also you get first hand insight into what is successful and what are the best people making right now. Knowing what the best people are making at any given moment is incredibly useful, because you are part of the most contemporary conversation possible, and the things you make naturally respond to relevant social and cultural topics.

But I have been reconsidering my ban on narrative cartoons, I have been drawing cartoons for a while, but have refused to make them into a story type narrative. That may be over now, I have been thinking of ways to best make an interesting story using the Bird.

I like the way The Drips uses paintings to tell the story. Plus you can see the perforated edges of the paper where it was ripped from a pad in some cases, or the edges of nicer paper, and there are scratches and dents in the things, but it all fits in well with the aesthetic. I think that may be a good way for me to work, because I like to draw my cartoons on notebooks I keep in my front pocket so the edges are usually a little crumpled.

I have 3 more bird drawings. I will go downstairs and scan them after I get done up here writing this.

Todd Snider

You Got Away With It.

If you do not know who Todd Snider is do yourself a favor and find out. I have been listening to his live album Near Truths and Hotel Rooms, and it is one of the best albums I have ever hear, including how good I thought Use Your Illusion 1 and 2 were when I was 13.