farmers market

Hey everyone!

I know, I know it's been months. It's been a wild summer and many beautiful events and actions have taken place. There were ups and downs and ups again. 

I've been traveling a lot. I went across the country and it was musical and scenic. If Utah were next to the ocean we'd all live there immediately. 

I've been in the studio a lot. I have some really talented studio mates and a great job these days. 

Yesterday I went to the Temescal farmers market which is always relaxing and inspiring way to start the day. For the best tofu in the world, giant bags of spring mix speckled with calendula petals, unwaxed organic apples. children, tamales, persimmons, the best new orleans style iced coffee. Indulge city. 

There is also a very wonderful poet with a typewriter who will write poems for you and share some good energy. His name is Zach Houston. I recommend. He's at the ferry building on saturdays and the market on sunday and probably many other places. rides a bike and shares words. 

Also my studio mates have websites: 

Georgia

Lori 

Sean (not sure what sean's website is. here is one of his pieces at maniac though) 

I will have some more pictures up soon. 

Here are a few pictures from the summer:

some pictures and collages

these are all from video footage. most of them were taken from car windows on my way around northern california and oregon.

photography of the body

You know when you were a junior in highschool and you have amassed piles of magazine clippings that end up all over the floor, then in a box, then sifted through every few months gleaning the good stuff, putting some of it up on lavendar walls you've had since you were a kid and hated in middleschool and don't mind now because when you come home from college everything else has changed in your room because your mom took down all your ripped out magazine pages and put up giant posters of doll heads?

I just had a moment- that jolt of memory having found an old thing forgotten in a box, but this time it was on the internet.

I wouldn't be surprised if this photograph is in my current box of papers, having made it past multiple organizing/trashing rampages.

Anyway. Now the photograph has a name: Ryan McGinley.

This is complementary to a discussion I was having with photographer friend about the artistic legitimacy of taking pictures of your naked friends. Many things begin with naked friends. Nudity may be at the basis of relation, of truth. Shedding barriers we've created. Getting back to eden. Even if it is fashion photography.

Fashion photography is interesting because of its duality with artificiality and truth. You've got the body in all its honesty, yet its after a selection process, comparison to other bodies, and then usually altered for the final, ideal representation of a human in the name of consumable goods.

We've all recognized that many fashion ads don't even present the product at hand. Just a mood, a way of life, something to be attained and usually the body and the product are unattainable.

All photography is like this. A moment's passed and there is a longing for it that can never be reached and that is the preciousness of photography. Wanting to be there, wanting to have that piece of time, living vicariously through someone elses portrayed existence and someone elses eye. One looks, one looks upon, and we the viewer have this unanswered affection for both of these beings.

The history of a body positioned in time is very evocative to the soul.

STUDIO!

Hi Everyone! 

I am getting a studio space together with my friend Georgia April 1st! We need at least two more people and even more if we can. 

If anyone's interested please let me know. 

Until then I'm making massive amounts of collages on my bedroom floor. 

Can't wait to get down with my oil paints again! 

SIMON EVANS: island time

Ever Since I saw the 2005 SECA Awards I have been in love with Simon Evans work. This piece is spectacular and look at the rest of the show. See gallery here. 

I'm fainting with enthusiasm. It's like filthy weather and longing. 

Spirituality

Virgin Mary illustration (sufi)

Jaina diagram of the primary divisions within the unified cosmos (yantra)

Books I've been into lately:

Sufi: expressions of the mystic quest, Laleh Bakhtiar

Yantra, the Tantric symbol of cosmic unity, Madhu Khanna

Tantra: the secret power of sex, Arvid and Shanta Kale (okay so the rest of the book is super cheesy and culturally strange/very India, 1976, sexual revolution type stuff...but I really like this paragraph in the intro)

There's also this triangle diagram of basic human existence in the sufi book that blows my mind. Check that book out for sure. 

I also made a Yantra for meditation (it's like a Mandala) in my screen printing class. (I'll post soon)

YES, YOU!

SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY! is the beginning of my 

dear friend JESSICA CAISSE'S senior photography show 

at CCA. Sun Feb 22nd to Saturday Feb 28th. Come 

for the reception on Wednesday from 5:30 to 7:30. 

This is all going down at the North Gallery on the 

California College of the Arts OAKLAND campus. 

Caisse is an enormously talented color photographer. She's 

originally from Lake Tahoe. Born in Oakland, marinated

in Pebble Beach and roasted in a belly button of Napa 

Valley. NOW she lives in Oakland and is also a truly super-

fantastic person. So let's give it up our Northern Californian sister! 

BTW, the show is called PALIMPSEST-- a word I had to look

up in my dictionary widget. Now you want to know what it

means. The best way to do this is to come on Wednesday 

and see the word manifested in a way that surpasses any

linguistic function! 

We should all go.

My friend Blake found this postcard at the Hatch gallery in Oakland last Friday during the openings. 

The opening's on Saturday, March 7th from 7-1 am. It's a dance party too! Roots/Dancehall by a few DJs. 

667 11th St. between MLK and Castro. davidplatford.com

New Group Show!

First Friday! January 2nd, 7pm

MUA at 2442 Webster (across from God's Gym on Broadway) in Oakland!  (Muaoakland.com)

The show is put on By Maniac Gallery.  

irons

"I was intent on making something that didn't tell people what to do." -John Cage

This painting walked into my studio at school and seemed interested in something I was working on. I asked him the other day a yes-or-no question about the composition of the piece I was working on. He looked sort of confused and went off about options of meaning in the piece; what each compositional decision would mean. 

I relate to things. I don't pick them apart. How can there possibly be an observed meaning in everything? How can you look at a piece of art and not just look at it for at least a few seconds before you stop feeling and begin thinking. Does everyone else look at art and immediately file them under as a kind of art historical reference? 

I spend a lot of time looking at things and appreciating them. Sometimes it's comforting to know what they mean and how they work but i associate them more with how it looks and what it's made of and how many people were involved. What was involved? How many steps were there? 

What it means is an opinion. I can come up with my own. It's nice to find out what the intention was, but it's not my main concern. 

I look at an iron and I don't wonder how it works. I think about the one person who put the small parts on it and continued to do this over and over in the same spot with many other people in their spots and what's it like to go home and how does it feel after your hands do that all day with your feet on holding you up all day and what does their house look like and do they have to wear a hair net and who else lives in their house, do they have a cat, how do they feel about putting parts on irons that get sent to many places so people can make fabric smooth and do they ever use an iron?   

That's what I'd rather know. 

Group Show!

Hey! Here's a great Holiday Gift idea! 

Buy some are for under 400 dollars (don't worry it's not all going to be like $300 either)

at FIVEten Studio! on 9th and Broadway in Downtown Oakland. 

The opening will be on Saturday, December 13th, from 6-9. 

There will be many different artists showing like me and my friends Lori and Justin and Georgia! and Lori's friend Miguel who I just met and many others who I haven't met. but I should and so should you!

the exhibition will continue through the month of december. 

here's a new painting from october:

I have a website now!

plasticforest.com

Recently I've been disconnected from the internet which is okay because I get to watch movies from the sixties and make collages.

I've also been interning at this sweet gallery called FIVEten on 9th and Broadway (downtown Oakland). They have some sweet products by local designers and fine art shows. Go there for your fashionable holiday shopping. I'm there most Fridays if you want to hang out. And it's right next to the Downtown Oakland Farmers Market! Hella cheap veggies. They have exotic dates on the branch and thai eggplants (round eggplant!) and cashew sorbet. Do it. 

I have another painting to add to the site and i hope to complete at least one more before the semester ends. 

And I will be having an upcoming group show in January (the reception on the 2nd with all the other first friday openings) at this restaurant/bar in a big lofty space called Mua on webster (where webster and Broadway meet at 25th) in downtown Oakland. It's curated by this wonderful person named Petra. She's got a gallery called Maniac on 17th and Franklin- a block from Broadway.

collages/drawings

I've been working in the studio constantly for the last month. I haven't documented the latest paintings. Here are some older gouache and pencil drawings and newer collages. more coming soon. 

         

who chooses these stills? That would be such a specific occupation.

Isn't it nice to think of specific occupations?

Bernardo Justin Sanhueza Campoy

A painter I found while perusing the New American Paintings website. It's my favorite art magazine because its just full of pictures of paintings and then short artist statements and none of that other junk they put in art magazines. Anyway. Check out the website I really like this guys style. 

my favorite is ratatat to get me motivated for this stuff. 

when you were thirteen on the oldies station.

that you don't believe we're on the eve

This is my friend Jake's blanket that he loves. It reminds me of upsetting things in a really funny way. Especially that ram on the left.

old stuff

I used to go to this liquor store in oakland and these cousins ran the place. This first one of Askar--he always sat on this mini-fridge and you never noticed him when you came in. He was quiet as a cat. Then Ali would always ring me up and be humming these songs but he never said anything usually. I think they said they were from Yemen originally.

Askar, 2007

Ali, 2007