Bicycle of my future, somehow. A version, at least. Wrote a post about bicycling over at CV.

Stereolab: Dots and Loops, originally uploaded by Littlepixel™.

“I put it on at a party, only to frown when the 5/4 rhythm of “Parsec” seemed to puzzle drunks attempting to dance.”

, originally uploaded by super ape.

an interview with Peter Evan

When I see new images from Hamada Hideaki, I feel like I am reading a very good novel. There’s something not so much cinematic in these gorgeous moments, but literary — an ambience in the images that transcends time or surface. They make me happy!

first of may

the secret garden

see the distant cloud, then you feel so proud

What can one do with beauty after the eye of the camera has clicked? It is eight days since we arrived and as yet I can invest no emotional quality to the brilliant unblinking panorama beyond the window. It is as unreal as celluloid, until I actually bend down and scratch my fingers on a thorn of a cactus. One must find fertile soil in the imagination in which to send down roots; nothing can be taken for granted until it is credibly set off against a familiar theme. This is the paradox of age and reason. In childhood it is different; there are flexibilities and infinite potentialities; then one can accept the authenticity of the unfamiliar with unclouded innocence and grapple to oneself the rounded and the shining, like bright toys; then quickly begin the cocoon of tradition.

- Isobel English, Every Eye, 1956

yours truly

I moved back to California on September 1st and now I live within biking distance to the beach and the Redwoods and I have a cool new job. Life is good.

And while I do miss the people in Chicago, I have to admit that I don’t miss the city much. It’s a wonderful city, really, but I guess I’m just not city folk. Five years in Chicago altogether. I don’t think that I will live there again.

I noticed on Gaper’s Block that this David Schalliol print is available (and affordable) through a project called Wall Blank for a limited time. This is the first I’ve heard of Wall Blank, but I do really like this series by Schalliol, a Chicago photographer whose work can also be seen in Catherine Edelman’s Gallery’s Chicago Project. I guess this print will be unavailable after next Thursday, dating this post rather quickly — but I’ll be interested to see what other prints they put up for sale in the future.

Not a very bloggy summer. More of a summer for sweaters and training for marathons.

When summer begins, I become sad. It would seem that the luminosity, even if it is acrid, of summer hours should delight someone who doesn’t know who he is. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t delight me. There is too sharp a contrast between external life, which overflows, and what I feel and think, without knowing how to feel or think — the perennially unburied body of my sensations.

Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

It’s time to get outside and start bothering people on the street for portraits. So that’s what I did today. See more portraits as I add them here.

Hyde Park Art Center, May 10, 3-5

At the NEXT Art Fair yesterday, I listened to a talk on alternative spaces for art given by Allison Peters from Hyde Park Art Center, Jen Bekman, Heather Hubbs from NADA, and Britton Bertran, along with the unexpected and much appreciated addition of a local art collective known as Law Office and founder of FGA (Fucking Good Art), Pedro Velez, who both had some entertaining anecdotes about making art and money (and refusing to make money) in Chicago.

I have this habit of serendipitously arriving at events or meeting people who relate to something taking place about a week ahead in my life — Last weekend, we accidentally drank beer with a guy who worked at the office where Greg would be interviewing this week for a job. This weekend, I found myself listening to a talk that schooled me a little in local alternative art spaces and pointed to the show this next weekend at Hyde Park Art Center, Artists Run Chicago, that harkens back to the now discontinued Stray Show, an annual fair for alternative galleries — I had already been planning on attending this show as my brother’s work once again makes an appearance in Chicago, being represented by local gallery, devening projects + editions.

Overall, NEXT and Artropolis was overwhelming, as it was last year, but I also felt underwhelmed by the work there. It felt loose and haphazard, but also a little more cramped. And frankly, it wasn’t as cool-looking, in general. The art just wasn’t as pretty. I didn’t walk out of there feeling that anything had made a big impression, intellectually or aesthetically.

However, I’m more hopeful about the Hyde Park Art Center show this weekend, so that’s where I’ll be on Sunday!

from Barrio