feather2pixels

An instant classic:

(Didn’t he read the syllabus?  I only accept cash.)

Hi.  I have returned from a long satisfying voyage, visiting friends and family in Israel, Berlin, France, Slovenia, and Scotland.  I  have a lot of work to do on feather2pixels, but for now here are some pictures waiting for your tender mousecliks.

I just finished a big proposal and it forced me to consolidate an updated art resume.  This was sort of an enlightening experience and I feel like posting the result.  Maybe later I will post more about the proposal, or as I like to call it: the opportunity I have been waiting five years for.

You should realize that I have the best of blogging intentions. Not only am I usually thinking of great ideas for posts, but I constantly find myself toying with concepts for simple flourishes that I’m confident would accumulate to the astonishingly rich digital archive of my dreams. Man I’m telling you, in a certain imagining of my life there’s something delightful posted about every cognitive-behavioral event I experience.  You would log on every day and I would knock your socks off. Woe is me that somewhere along the way, the gap between my ambition and my lack of follow-through comes to bear.

For example, take this screen drying cabinet I just built.

While depicting no overstatement in an account of my true feelings, I can honestly tell you that I would feel so much more complete and validated if I:

• told you the story of how I very grudgingly decided to build this myself once my carpenter leads dried up.
• chronicled my 10 day evolution from shamefully bad to very bad woodworker.
• described the notably not worth it sense of accomplishment I felt upon completion.

Seriously.

I am just a closeted, self-loathing product of of my time and place.

But anyway, in practice I guess I suck at this.  Basically the main idea is that now I know how to build a wooden box on wheels.

…Kind of.

…It’ll come in handy.  (Thanks to Jake R. and Jesse B. for the invaluable advice on this.)

“You all know me
Still same old G
But I have been low key
Strongly disliked by most of these fellows with no means of personal motorized transportation,
No snowmobiles and no skis.”

–Adapted from Dr. Dre, M.D.

Hello.  Welcome to the post in which I sheepishly acknowledge my conspicuous lack of online activity and do my best to atone.  I am still active.  I still remember my English.  I’ve just been reluctant to spend any more summer time than necessary in front of the computer.  Apparently, this reluctance does not extend to shopping for leather boots or streaming “Nightmare on Elm Street” to my bed.  But rest assured that in this particular struggle between mind and matter, I resolve that mind shall heretofore regain the upper hand to ultimately slay matter, separating head from body in however many bloody blows to the neck it takes to get this blog rolling again.

Did I mention that I was away for a while?  It’s true.  I can even prove it with this doctored cell phone picture from the Israeli-Syrian border:

And since then I have been in the studio, busy as an autistic beaver.  Six layer night-scene posters, second edition wood prints, t-shirts up the wazoo, a collaboration with Molly Martin and Torben Ulrich (Lars’ dad):  I have had my reticular webbed paws in a little bit of everything this summer.

And now I want to share it all with the world.  My plan is to post a little something every day or so until I am caught up.  By updating feather2pixels.com, I am confident that the world will be a changed place.    When you finally see all that I have been up to, I am confident that you will eventually click out of your browser and perhaps get a drink of water.

Bless me internet, for I have a confession to make.  I am not proud of my actions but I know that you will forgive me.  What have I done you ask, oh all knowing and sensible protocol of digital information transfer?   Well, I’m just going to write it quickly without thinking.  So here goes.   Judge me sympathetically.

Earlier this year, I sat in front of a computer for fifty hours and taught myself CSS and HTML.

There.

Yes there were many other things of much greater importance that needed to get done than sitting in front of a computer for fifty hours and learning CSS and HTML.  And yes almost every other part my life including my art already involves sitting in front of a computer to a near depressing degree that hardly justifies the addition of leisure time.  But as the code of this sub-par website became more obsolete by the minute, my ego just couldn’t handle the unfaced challenge of acquiring the knowledge needed to thrust it from 1998 standards.  I knew nothing and, with the deed now done and in the words of Ben, I now know next to nothing.

Ostensibly, the purpose of this fools errand was to get a fresh internet start with documentation of my latest series, Valencia to Vermont.   And I guess the point of this post is to announce that the series is officially online, programmed kind of the right way, and ready for your onslaught of clicks.  Just remember, even the stuff that looks the same was made from scratch, it took me a long long time, and I am a stubborn asshole who would rather pretend he can learn anything than pay someone competent to do anything right.

Prepare to be underwhelmed.  I give you:    (The website)

Next event: Wednesday.  Come check out this pain in the ass of an installation and see what all the non-fuss is about.  As for the lack of posts last month, well, I have been busy  moving and procrastinating at my day job.  However next week school is out and I start anew.  Get ready, internet. 

So the art opening for the 24th Street project isn’t on March 5th anymore.  Actually, I think the art opening for the 24th Street project isn’t happening anymore.  Luckily, aside from feather2pixel’s five loyal readers who were expecting free booze and sandwiches, I anticipate next to nobody will care.  I’ll just have to get the next round for you guys.  If it was my space and I had my way, then there would be an art opening for the 24th Street project.  Every day.  But it is not and that is okay.

Regardless, beginning next week, the art will be open to the public until the end of time.  Or at least for as long as combination locally sourced gourmet sandwich shops/patisseries remain financially solvent in the Mission District.  And hopefully that is a long long time.

In the meantime, you have to check out my Twitter debut!   From the Local Mission Eatery account, this is me in the space, rounding corners of the 360 blank art wall tiles.  I have finally become the modern man I knew I could be.

Reading an article on logistics management in the Haiti earthquake relief effort made me feel like a real asshole for that last post.  People in the capital are waiting hours in line for one bottle of water and I am complaining that it’s falling from the sky for free.

Feather2pixels has been on unofficial hiatus and make no mistake: the only reason I am writing now is a gigantic stack of grading situated on the corner of my desk in dire need of procrastination. I can do that. This year’s tease of a spring break–two days, extended to three by a technique I call canceling classes–is coming to a close and we need to pull it all together before April’s graduation. This is me pulling it together.

Last weekend I found myself stranded in the Sierra Nevada with Mark, Keri, and Jill. By stranded, I of course mean snowed in for 48 hours at a luxury cabin equipped with frozen fillet mignon and four hundred channels of satellite television (which, to make matters even more hellish, required a 50 yard trek to remove the snow from the five foot-high dish). Speaking of positive yardage, I officially never have to see another replay of Eli Manning’s fourth quarter pass to David Tyree that set up the Giants’ improbable win on Sunday. I don’t care if it was the biggest play in NFL history: an afternoon of one Superbowl highlight is the 2008 equivalent of the Donner party’s snowbound hell in this same area one hundred seventy years ago.

Here are some other things last weekend taught me:

1. Avoid winter lodging on one-lane roads inhabited by people who neglect their annual plowing fees.
2. When calling work to explain one’s snowbound dilemma, it’s best to refer to “The Sierras” rather than “Tahoe.”
3. The chances of surviving a snowbound episode can be increased by preparing a life-giving tonic of double chocolate brownie fudge gourmet ice cream blended with ordinary milk.
4. When electrical power is lost, two fit people can reasonably recreate approximations of Eli Manning’s fourth quarter pass to David Tyree until NFL Tonight is restored. A large pine cone can be used if a football is unavailable.

If you don’t have anything nice to say, then password-protect your blog.

So the only viable solution for editing this blog for public consumption was to retroactively privitize half the posts. This sucks. This makes me think: what’s the point. Anyway, email me if you want the password.