Works in Progress ‘10

Exerpts #4

From Paul Auster’s City of Glass:

“A white wall becomes a yellow wall becomes a gray wall.  The paint becomes exhausted, the city encroaches with its soot, the plaster crumbles within.

Changes, then more changes still.”

Exerpts #3

From Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass:

‘I don’t rejoice in insects at all,’ Alice explained, ‘because I’m rather afraid of them, at least the large kinds.  But I can tell you the names of some of them.’

‘Of course they answer to their names?’ the Gnat remarked carelessly.

‘I never knew them do it.’

‘What’s the using of their having names,’ the Gnat said, ‘if they won’t answer to them?’

‘No use to  them,’ said Alice, ‘but it’s useful to the people that name them, I suppose.  If not, why do things have names at all?’

Nigel Shafran

He worked on a project in which he photographed the items he was in the process of purchasing from the grocery before the transaction was made.  In doing so, he was documenting a certain rite of passage – the moment when seemingly random objects are selected by an individual in order to serve a particular purpose, the purpose assigned to them by the consumer.  These are moments when the owner is defined, when the objects are given a subjective meaning. 

 So right now, they are still without a history – still fresh from the objective/impersonal groupings of ‘meat’, ‘bread’, ‘water’, etc.  However, these objects are not yet Nigel’s.  These objects still belong to the institution from which he is purchasing.  He cannot eat the bread, nor drink the water (comfortably).  They are in the staging lane, waiting to be transferred into his arms.  They are prospects, full of plans and possibilities that are designed by the consumer, Nigel.  Within a matter of minutes, Nigel will be able to drink from Nigel’s water.

Walker Evans

1.)  Walker Evans (born December 3, 1938) is an Off-road Motorsports Hall of Famer. He was also a driver and owner in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Walker Evans is nicknamed “the Legend”. Walker is the father of off-road racer Evan Evans. Walker resides in Riverside, California.

2.) Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans’s work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8×10-inch camera. He said that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are “literate, authoritative, transcendent”. Many of his works are in the permanent collections of museums, and have been the subject of retrospectives at such institutions as The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Works in Progress ‘10

Exerps #2

From Paul Auster’s City of Glass:

“When I say the word ‘umbrella’, you see the object in your mind.  You see a stick, with collapsible metal spokes on top that form an armature for waterproof material which, when opened, will protect you from the rain.

This last detail is important.

Not only is an umbrella a thing, it is a thing that performs a function.   In other words – expresses the will of man.

When you stop to think of it, every object is similar to an umbrella, in that it serves a function.  A pencil is for writing, a shoe is for wearing, a car is for driving.

What happens when a thing no longer performs its function? Is it still the thing, or has it become something else? When you rip the cloth off the umbrella, is it still an umbrella?

In general, people still define it as one.”

Exerps #1

From Roland Barthes Eiffel Tower:

“…it is a pure signifier, i.e. of a form in which men unceasingly put meaning (which they extract at will from their knowledge, their dreams, their history), without this meaning thereby ever being finate and fixed: who can say what the tower will be for humanity tomorrow?

No doubt it will always be something.

Glance, object, symbol such is the infinite circut of functions which permits it always to be something other and something much more that the Eiffel Tower.”

Letter to the Editor

* After returning home from the studio, I ate an apple and made a cup of coffee (with sugar I stole from the cafe by my school) in addition to my oatmeal.  I left earlier than expected and ended up at school an hour before my meeting.  I went to the library.  In the library I worked on one of the papers I mentioned I had to write.  I also developed some ideas for my project.  My meeting ended up being pushed back 45 min.  I went to the cafe (the very same one I stole sugar from) and got two eggs (scrambled) with potatoes and toast.  I spilled my water when I was trying to reach for my phone.  I got water all over my jacket.  I imagined going outside with the coat on and all the water turning into ice. I went to my meeting – it wasn’t helpful.