I broke down my studio today in preparation for moving. It was amazing how much junk was in that room.. interesting junk, for sure, but there is only so much room in the moving truck. Among the oddities that I took to the dump: one waveform vectorscope monitor (broken), one S-VHS deck (broken), one G1 iMac (broken), and two color tubes from a broken large-screen TV. I had hopes of fixing these, or at least scrapping them for parts, but that job will have to fall on someone else. If that person is you then hurry up and get over to the Rockport dump!

Here is a photo of my empty studio (cow skull added for effect):

I mentioned in the last post that I would write about the Henry Darger exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum in New York, so here goes: Go see the henry Darger exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. Seriously, it was fantastic. Seeing Darger’s work in person is amazing, a little creepy, but amazing. The man certainly had an extraordinary imagination, but troubling obsessions.

Some highlights of the exhibit for me were Robyn O’Neil’s These Moving Bodies, These Dumb Processions:

and Anthony Goicolea’s Fleeing:

There were many other extraordinary works in the show, but I won’t post any more in the hopes that you will go out and see them for yourself!

Dargerism: Contemporary Artists and Henry Darger will be on display until September 21.

Hmmm… I guess sarcasm does not work well in blog-speak. To clear things up from the last post, I don’t really think that Jeff Koons is a fresh new face in the art world. He is pretty high up on my list..  although the jury is still out for me on the “Made in Heaven” series.

In other news..  I decided to take another stab at the Met today, this time just in the European Paintings section with a side trip to the photography exhibits. I made an attempt to stay on course and see the artwork in a chronological order..  which is trickier than you would think. That place is tough for the easily distracted…  a few wrong turns and you are a continent (and usually centuries) away from where you started. I decided to go through and take images of images that I found to be personally inspiring or thought-provoking. It’s an experiment I reccommend to anyone searching for their own voice as an artist, which is something I am certainly eager to find. A later examination of images you choose based soley on your reaction to is a great way to deduce your own inspirations and interests.

Here are just a few of the ones that immediately jumped out at me:

Jean-Francois Millet: Haystacks: Autumn, ca. 1874

Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret: The Pardon in Brittany, 1886

Johan Christin Dahl: The Eruption of Vesuvius, 1824

William Merritt Chase: James Abbott McNeil Whistler, 1885

Which reminded me immediately of a photograph that I love by Erwin Olaf, from his Fashion Victims series:

Thats all for The Met. I have lots more, but this long post is already going to be tough on that infamous 30 seconds of interest people have on the internet. I also visited the American Folk Art Museum to see an excellent exhibition based on Henry Darger’s work, which will be my next post. And in something completely unrelated, I just watched a crazy show on Discovery about army ants..  it freaked me out something awful, and I highly reccommend it.