Category: Blog

Memphis’ basketball team showed off its new logo today. I think it looks great. I love the colors, too.

This is one of the images I’m using for the exhibition I’m in next month. I’ve never made prints until now from this series. Here’s where all this started:

Polk Museum catalogue

Just when I thought I was getting into the flow of a LJ routine, I get busy with other things and haven’t been able to continue it. I thought I was finished taking photos for my friend’s (Edouard’s) show at UCLA Fowler Museum, he’s got two more works to shoot. We had planned it for today but, his son had something going on and he’s going to be with his family instead. The photo shoot is for tomorrow evening now.

I can’t get back into the darkroom before Wed. next week. It doesn’t look like I’ll be able to have any pinhole images for an upcoming show [that my friend (Edouard) has curated titled, “Nepotism”]. That’s why I using existing negs although, they’ve never been printed, for the most part.

They are a combination of b&w positive and negative images taken over the past 11 years. They were put into slide mounts because my original intention was for a slide presentation with a audio sound track and monologue (written by myself). I’ve used it sparingly over the years, just recently as my presentation at the recent panel discussion at Miami Art Museum. The upcoming show is at Museum of Art, Ft. Lauderdale in June, 2004.

I finally went to see a doctor. I feel fine but, I haven’t seen a doctor in years. That’s what happens when one doesn’t have insurance. Anyway, they took some blood and said they’d let me know what the results were on Wednesday. I called but, wasn’t able to talk to the doctor or nurse. The nurse called back after I left for the Univ. to work in the darkroom and said everything was fine. I called back to ask in person this morning. The nurse repeated that every test they did came back saying I was in very good health and all the numbers were within the correct ranges. I’m happy but, I still need more exercise. I sit in front of the computer too much! If I had more space I could exercise here in this space. As it is, everytime I want to do anything (just about), I have to move this and that and the other. *sigh* It is such a frustration. I hope I can last until fall and then I can find a better place to live and work. I pray I get back on fulltime. Being an adjunct is so tenuous.

Los Angeles County
Banning (Phineas) Senior High
Address:
1527 Lakme Ave.
Wilmington, CA
90744-1526
Phone Number: (310) 549-7500

Map it!

Statistics for Banning (phineas) Senior High:
School District: Los Angeles Unified
County: Los Angeles
Low Grade: 09
High Grade: 12
Locale: Large Central City
Charter: No
Magnet: Yes
Title 1 School: Yes
Title 1 School Wide: Yes
Number of Students: 3190
Number of Teachers: 99.99
Teacher to Student Percent: 24.00
Male: 1636
Female: 1554
Native American: 8
Asian: 127
Black: 250
Hispanic: 2716
White: 89
Number of Students Receiving Free Lunch: 1911
Number of Students Receiving Reduced Lunch: 167
Migrant Students: 5

My family had moved half way through my high school years (second half of the 10th grade). Banning is where I graduated. When I was a student there were many more white students. There was also a good number of Samoan and South Pacific Islanders. The ratio of African American students was higher. The ration of Latino students was lower. And, there were less students overall. One high school friend I’m still in touch with. He’s also an artist, naturally.

more images of lectures in Miami, FL

This afternoon was lecture by Chuck Close who is exhibiting his prints at Miami Art Museum. A show of prints is certainly easier to mount than paintings, especially with insurance values for a travelling show, but this is something he envisioned many years ago. Most of the time once an edition has been run the master plates get destroyed but, Close kept all of his because the process of making art has always been important to him. He said he only paints about three paintings per year now. They are very labor intensive and he needs his assistants to assist him throughout the process. He takes his own photos using a 20 x 24 polaroid camera.

Because he’s in a wheelchair after his spinal blood clot, his studio has a slot built into the floor that allows his paintings to be rotated and, raised and lowered into the floor so that the position where he paints remains the same, only the painting moves. This is because he grids the photos he works from and transfers the information to his canvas. Obviously, it is not the same as drawing a straight line, for instance, but a series of tonalities that then represents what we identify as a line.

His quest was to create a work in which every square inch was equal in value to every other square inch. He’s worked over thirty years at it so, we assume he’s reached a level of perfection that transcends the process. If you took a digital image and look at each pixel you’d see something like his paintings are constructed although, he began this search before computer images were seen by most except some computer geeks.

Anyway, you can see I’m thinking about art tonight…

Greek pottery and sculpture was my initial inspiration for a series of drawings done some years ago. I was in Tampa, FL for an opening and decided to visit the Tampa Museum in some of my spare time. I hadn’t noticed until that trip the color relationships in the classical pottery of the Greeks: black figures on red clay, white figures on black, and black figures on natural (tan colored) pottery. You could actually call this a painting because I used a brush, not a pencil or pen.

I started off working with images of (contemporary) construction workers in drawings that looked like Greek pottery. Then I worked on a few related to the slave experience. I didn’t do that many drawings but, I like them in some ways.

I actually used the oxide colored mud I had collected in Minnesota on my very first trip there for the background. I love the red-oxide color and have used it for several projects. I still have a bucket full of it.

I’m a basketball lover. I love the game, always have. I probably got it from my father and aunt. Yes, my family used to play ball in church leagues. My uncle that died last summer told me if there was a WNBA when they were younger, my aunt that I visited during Christmas would have easily been a star player. One thing that I DO remember about those games was walking into the men’s locker room and getting that manscent that just knocked me for a loop. It is still memorable but, not in a bas way. It was just something very profound on my young mind that I never forgot. I was probably between six and eight years old.

Anyway tonight, the Miami Heat came through in a must win game against the NBA’s top team for season wins this year. It was an amazing game even though I watched it on TV. If they win a game in Indiana on Saturday I think it will be a definitive game for a team that was a laughing stock only last year. It’s NOT fair because Alonzo Mourning had to retire due to illness but, the team was built around him and he was gone, not playing his second year in a row. Now, it’s all about the Heat being the head turning team in this year’s playoffs.

Feel the HEAT!: 2004 Playoffs

Here are two pics of my kitchen/ cooking area. Yesterday I cooked skinless chicken breast marinated in tamari sauce garnished with onion and spices, fresh green beans (with diced onions and garlic, olive oil) and, a baked sweet potatoe. Dessert was a fruit bar with vanilla ice cream. I only ate about half of what I cooked because I’ve been pretty inactive and when I’m less active, I eat less. I thought food consumption should be based on metabolism, not that most people eat three meals per day. I’ve only been eating once per day since classes ended, ending my hunger with fruit (dried & fresh), yogurt and other things like leftovers. I have eaten breakfast a few mornings so, I have eaten two meals in a single day several times. I’m not going hungry by any means. I eat well all the time. The only time in my life I went hungry was when I was in college away from home with no stores nearby campus. That didn’t last long but, I lost 15 lbs. in 6 months. I hated that college. Anyway, here’s a view of my dinner preparations.