High Beats Low

Yesterday, while I was at work, the hundred-degree heat slowly melted my shitty be-vinyled windowsill. Hot, soft vinyl tore away from the house under the power of relentless sun and the weight of my favorite window box. Finally, the basil plants I grew from seed went plummeting down to the landlord's stinking garden below. The molded plastic box cracked open, and the fragile plants died on the cement among the dog doo, weeds, and garbage.

But then. One of my very favorite people in the whole world left me a phone message, saying that she won a huge huge grant for her beautiful work. Her work, which is so genuine, intrinsically and vitally links the making of art with the growing of gardens. The work is alive, it's growing, it looks like alchemy. I appreciate the karmetic loss of my sad mini-garden in trade for a true and ecstatic garden lover's gain. I am so totally proud and excited for her.

Go Apple!!!  (photo from the pleasure of gardening)

Good advice from Wesley

http://wesleyham.com/

Over at Mull It Over, our friend Wesley gives some great advice to all recent MFA grads. I wish someone had said this to me when I finished:

JC: One piece of advice to recent photography graduates?
WH: Go to Mexico, or somewhere cheap where you can decompress from school. Seriously, take some time to reflect on what was bullshit and what was real from what you learned in school. Then, get busy. Do whatever it takes to learn as much as possible as fast as possible. Make a 5 year plan, visualize yourself in the future and come up with a real plan to make it there. Also, try to work for free as little as possible. People will exploit free labor. 

If you're not learning something in an internship or assistantship, bounce. If you are teaching your boss, bounce. Also, fight for the time to make your own work. Don’t spend your life helping other people make their work…

The Real Deal.

Rosary Resin Hand

Face Off

The bottles in my magic desk should feed directly into my face, so I can suck up the energy 

collected therein. An old friend stopped by the studio last week and remarked that now he 

understands why I didn't do too many drugs in college (with all my other friends) - because 

my brain is already that psychedelic. I don't know about that, but here's what it took for 

Gabriela, George and me to make a mold of my face:

pouring on the alginate

adding the plaster strips

the inside of the mold after de-molding from my face

pouring FGR plaster into the mold

since the sides of the mold weren't steady, it expanded.