The end of an era

As you will no doubt recall on 18Oct08 I blogged a post, or perhaps plugged a boast or flogged a roast or snogged a host or hugged a ghost or… Wait a minute…

Where was I?

Oh. Yeah. So, in 2008 I mentioned a piece I did on the landmark Monster Island building, an arts and music space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Well, Monster Island is about to be submerged in a tsunami of industrial “progress.” Its demise has been written up in the New York Times, Billboard, and several other places on the world wide Indra’s net. Or is it the veil of Maya? Either way this news seems very fitting for me personally.

Monster Island started seven years ago, which is around the time I moved to Brooklyn, and is now closing down around the time I moved away. This symmetry is just something I find personally resonant. Of course the largest part of the personal connection is the fact that I put a mural on its walls three years ago and it has remained there since. Another factor is that Kayrock printed my wedding invitations in that building as well.

Monster Island was a visual delight in Williamsburg for as long as I was there. It is sad to see it go, but I am glad I won’t see it go. Just another casualty in the war of attrition that is the Eternally Grinding Wheel of Progress. In restaurants we have sliders and poppers to attest to the fact that progress seems to have a goal of frictionless consumption, but what happens when there is nothing left for the Wheel to grind and nothing left for the gullet to consume? I suppose the Beast will then have to consume itself. I think it has already started.

Check out the links above and you can see my piece on the walls as the building enjoyed its last hurrah. Below are some images from my post of three years ago.

Thunderclouded valleys

Braddock, Pennsylvania? What the hell is in Braddock, Pennsylvania you ask? Well, I don’t know in general. I have never been there. But I do know one thing specifically. Are you interested to know? Well, lean closer and I will clue you in on a secret weapon that resides in Braddock, Pennsylvania and nowhere else. There resides a group of radical and enthusiastic artists that go by the collective name Transformazium. Through various and sundry networks of friends and collaborators I happen to know a couple of these Transformaziumites. One in particular, Leslie, invited me a couple months ago to participate in a fundraising event they were planning to take place in New York. I said okay, because Leslie is a stand up kind of lady.

Well, when she came to pick up the pieces I was donating for the big show we, as is our wont, fell into broad conversations about art and future plans. In the course of the conversation Leslie asked if I would ever consider doing a wall piece or mural in Braddock. Hell yes, I would. I explained that the conspicuous lack of large scale public art in my oeuvre had nothing to do with lack of interest or ability and everything to do with lack of legal opportunity. For the kind of work I would want to do I would need ample time and no paranoia. So, we discussed the possibility of a future project together.

Well, two days later I got an invite to do a piece in conjunction with the group show that opened last weekend. The building is Monster Island in Williamsburg, and the gallery that is hosting the show is Secret Project Robot. This building is the same place where Kayrock resides, the printers that printed my wedding invitations (see the blog archives). As a matter of fact Kayrock’s air conditioner was dripping on me 53% of my working time providing me with a delightful obstacle to completing a kind of piece I have never even done before! Joy!

The show closes officially this Saturday 18Oct08, with a dance party at 10pm, so if you live in the tri-state area come on out! My piece is permanent and will be there until the building is destroyed or a hater besmirches it or the residents of Monster Island decide to commission another artist to go over it. The title of the piece is Friedrich Blitzkrieg in the thunderclouded valley of the deathless gods, check it out:

Re-tying the Gordian knot

So far married life is absolutely wonderful! Mary and I tied the Gordian knot on Saturday 23 August 2008. The ceremony was typical of us, as Elliott said “that was the most organic wedding I have ever attended.” We will be posting all sorts of images and updates soon on our wedding blog, but I just wanted to post the invitation here, for all of you who haven’t seen it.

We are in Vienna right now having a delightful honeymoon and a well earned rest. We have slept like bears. The two weeks before the wedding and the week and a half after were incredibly hectic. It was like putting one’s head into a bee hive for 3 weeks, and getting stung just enough to remind you that you could be swarmed at any moment. But the honey was sweet. Finally after over 16 hours of travel, from car to plane to train to train to car, we arrived worn out and hungry, and now these bears are hibernating in Vienna. More on that later.

For the invitation we made a 2-color silkscreened poster on Stonehenge grey paper. It was printed by Kayrock in Brooklyn and they did a great job. I then spent three nights lovingly rolling posters, wrapping them with a purple belly band containing additional info, and binding it with a thick gross grain black ribbon and an aqua-green wax seal—sealed with a kiss, and finally placed into a cardboard poster tube with fluorescent address labels and white instruction stickers to hold down the thick ribbon on the outside.