From swillburg village to charlottesville

Juxtaposition

Logos

Extensions of the central nervous system

Attempt 1 and 2 got better

Learning a thing or infinite : gallery install

Collaborative newspapers

Order Creating Order Creating Order Creating Order

I got a sneak peek inside a very special office.

Have you ever seen the people in uniform late at night holding oversized TNG triquarters?
These people are counters.  They take inventory of a ridiculous number of items.  These posters are for training purposes.

An experienced counter can look at a shelf, or at a picture of a shell apparently, and count the repetitive lines, shapes and patterns.



Counters learn a certain way of seeing.
Where the painter looks at areas of light and dark, the counter looks at the way that shapes make patterns.  I raced a friend while at a Wegmans, counting a section of one aisle.  Erin is a counter, or rather, was a counter.  She was fast, and accurate.  I was not nearly as quick as her.   Something is clearly happening differently after a person practices counting large groups of items.  



Now without scrolling up, how many people are in the first picture? How many were black, how many were Asian, how many were Hispanic, how many were white?

PERSISTENCE and CREATIVITY

Today a woman said I am very Creative and Persistent.  

I forgot my wallet on the way to Century Wine and Liquor (the best liquor store in Rochester, by the way).  An unknown manager there declined service to Emily and I (Emily is my wonderful lady friend [by the way])  because well, I did not have ID and we were together.  

When asked if I had anything to show her, I offered my Facebook accounts "about" page, on my wonderful HTC Thunderbolt, (you will be assimilated [bytheway])

The situation was a nuisance, to skirt this law one simply must leave the store, and return a short time later, thank you New York State, brilliantly executing substance control yet again!

I knew there must be some way to prove my DOB with my smart phone... in the car I had it, I have federal student loans, as a result I am registered for the Selective Service.  I quickly logged into the sss.gov site and, using my social security, DOB and name arrived at a page that displayed all of these things... 

I decided I must get out of the car and go in to offer her this, not for the goal of purchasing alcohol but just to show her how awesome the internet is.  As I exited the parking lot she was behind my car, assisting a gentleman who was retrieving wine boxes to move his wine collection from one cellar to another.   

I offered her the sss.gov website, with my name, and date of birth displayed...  She told me Emily could go back in and buy the wine if I waited in the car.

Point is:

If you start hitting solid concrete with sledge hammers, then get a jack hammer.  If the jack hammer is still too much, hire someone from craigslist who has never done the job and agrees to a low price.  Then build some steps, over top, plant a decorative cabbage and there you go. Persistence and Creativity work together in all sorts of endeavors.

In Progress: Self Portrait in Acrylic

Visual Documentation of Exploration

The Projects?

Self Portrait Contrast

Keegan Olton, Self Portait Contrast Study, 2011,  42" x 34"

There is a change in emotive quality when a work departs from common visual systems and relies instead on unusual systems.   The high contrast of the bold lines of light and dark create a loose free system comprised mostly of some middle tone atmosphere.

OUTSIDER ART IS WHAT

OUTSIDER ART IS WHAT?

My grandmother went crazy.  On her way there she started drawing and working in marker and colored pencil.

This seems to be a drawing more of what a person understands, a cognition based on the ocular sensation rather than a depiction of what is.  The quality of this particular work is in the commitment of the artist, despite all odds.

KEEP THAT SHIT SAFE

YOU GOTTA KEEP THAT SHIT SAFE

Philadelphia Museum of Art.
They need that barbed wire. They need that big fence.
They need walls and bars that separate the NON-Art from the non-NON-Art
Despite the razors and locks, their are great works outside the museum...






The interaction of the museum with the surrounding city is not limited to the prison look, Louise Nevelsons Atmosphere and Environment XII, 1974 does a more subtle job of highlighting the meeting places between otherwise delineated space...

The outdoor sculpture garden, has some great spaces.

I felt like a small child at an amusement park when my eyes gazed at Oldenbergs "Giant Three-Way Plug, Scale A".

As I ran to it and gave it a joyous hug, the institution seemed to dissolve away and the entire world joined together to make a sensible, playful environment in which people's primary identity is human, and of the earth.  This wonderful experience continued up until the security guard forced me away from the sculpture.

The situation seemed odd.  The stability and durability of the piece combined with its setting contrasted with the sentiment of protection from the guard.

Exploring the drainage grating along the crevasse of the parking garage below is an exciting walk, also frowned upon.  If we are in a place which we call a sculpture garden, the entirety of the space needs to have potential for all sorts of physical engagements.  











To mentally engage with space is not enough, one must use their body and experience the space.  The physical engagement of the space proves mentally rewarding.

The green rough of the parking garage is interesting, and it is certainly an improvement upon the top of an otherwise skeletal parking garage.  The addition of a layer of life on an otherwise lifeless structure brings about an excellent arc in the life cycle of a very beautiful American city.

Take What You Need

Insert Names Here Soon

Artist Space In Sage (A.s.I.s.) is the name of a student gallery found in Sage Art Center, a squat building nestled below an ever growing forest of brick steel and concrete. 

The taller of the four in the above photo happen to be the parents of the two short guys in excellent graphic tees.  The two parents, names to be inserted here soon, were students who picked up some version of an art minor at the University of Rochester, prior to the university adding the studio arts major. 

In their days at Sage, the space currently referred to as AsIs gallery was no more than a hallway.  This hallway primarily housed a desk, which stood in the path of those entering the building.  Desks which occupy the spaces immediately to one side of door frames are very effective devices for symbolizing control and authority.

These particular students, as well as their classmates did not see the space of the hallway surrounding the desk and see a simple hallway.  They instead saw opportunity, blank walls and empty ceilings, space that the creative mind could oscillate into shape.

Their contact information and their kids website will be up on this post as well