The New York Times will publish on Sunday a great series on education in America. Featured will be a brilliant commissioned piece of taped graphic art by Stephen Doyle, posted here. The photography really draws it together. I found myself really liking the textured wrinkes and scrunches of tape along the floor. Follow the link [...]

There seems to be an explosion in the production of robot-driven art these days, perhaps capped off by MIT’s Robot Opera. This trend first hit my radar back in late summer 2010 with the Audi underwritten Outrace project in the UK. Prior to that, I was more familiar with the counter-cultural RC experiments of groups [...]

I’ve been having alot of fun playing around with the macro setting on my rinky-dink Nikon CoolPix (after watching some Tom Lowe timelapses I feel…hungry!). OUCH is a juicy example. Here’s another, wherein a little friend has a brief an unglorious encounter with my Lettera.

A couple of weeks ago I spent a day with Jock Gill of Pellet Futures. I wanted to learn more about his ideas to use biomass to produce charcoal as a by-product of open-flame cooking. When most of us think about grilling, we’re thinking about the use of charcoal. When we think about producing charcoal, [...]

Continuing to work on wood panel I’ve been trying to loosen up from a conventional texture-collage approach. What else can be done with a rich and varied texture as background? Instead of a intentional color what happens when you go completely loose and forget about whether it makes sense from a composition standpoint? What happens [...]

I’ve got to confess a real enjoyment of sepia-toned, shadow-suffused and steam-filled imagery of the Victorian period. There’s a rich mystery locked up in the works of the period – from the early greats like Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and HG Wells to contemporary conjurers like China Mieville, William Gibson, and possibly even Neal Stephenson [...]

A friend recently asked if I could make a “cat sarcophagus” for her daughter’s upcoming eighth birthday party. Along with the proposal she included a snapshot of a “cat mummy”  from London. Coincidentally, a few months prior, National Geographic had a cover issue dedicated to pet mummies of ancient Egypt, which my family had loved. So plenty [...]

Since the early ’90s I’ve occasionally experimented with multitrack recording and arranging. Somewhere around 1998 I put this piece together from clips from the early George Lucas film, “THX1138″ using Cakewalk, a bunch of analog inputs, a Macbook, and Berkeley software. Still holds up – barely! Click here to take a listen.

Gertrude Stein once wrote about ‘the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded.” I’ve always been struck since by puzzling constructions of repetitious word use. This is one I thought worked mysteriously well with images. In no particular order.

A bit of Magritte along with a humorous dose of techno-reactionism, whipped together this piece for Howard Rheingold, who long ago (think “SmartMobs”) got me excited about the large-scale social potential of mobile devices. He once lent me a vintage copy of Whole Earth Review for a paper I was putting together with Robert Cavalier [...]

Hey friends I’d love your take on this short story I wrote. Its intended for youngish readers, perhaps high school. I hope the older and more worldly among you will enjoy it as well!

One of the delights in taking a meander to – and through – a good antique or salvage shop is the discovery of once functional objects that have been shorn, busted, unmade and unusable. Yet a glimmer of their former utility is there – something to suggest that it should, or once would, do something. [...]

The poem that is the subject of this box – a steamy summery kind of musing, complete with blueberries, olympics, and humidity – is taken from the Fall 2006 ESOPUS magazine. Even though the poems, written in the ’80s by Vincent Katz, are about a breakup, I found them to be much more immediate, intimate, [...]

A few summers ago I experimented with thin, 3/16-inch plywood to produce textural finishes on top of which anyone could compose a visual engaging, personalized collage. I then took the dried mixedmedia work, sanded it up a bit, and wrapped in an arresting detail/section from a magazine cover. I composed little packages of collage items [...]

A friend recently asked if I could make a “cat sarcophagus” for her daughter’s upcoming eighth birthday party. Along with the proposal she included a snapshot of a “cat mummy” from London. Coincidentally, a few months prior, National Geographic had a cover issue dedicated to pet mummies of ancient Egypt, which my family had loved. [...]

Thanks to dear friend Jon for this must see international video collaboration. I am completely taken with the idea of using the urban landscape as a canvas. And even though the subject is kind of dull and reductive, the inspiration is brilliant!

While I was in Ithaca last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Victoria Romanoff, restorationist and artist. One of the pieces of ‘functional salvage art’ she introduced me to was her “washboard table.” The idea is elegantly simple: for an open-faced (front and back) table, join two antique washboards together with a top surface [...]

I am asking everyone I know to support a new effort in Montpelier: the Onion River Exchange’s Pecha Kucha Night. The idea is pretty cool, and really simple: – Two rounds of presenters – Each presenter has 6 minutes and 20 slides with which to present their idea – 5 presenters each round – Do [...]

These days I am occupied – nearly obsessed – with an idea for a new social venture start-up in Vermont – a state that thrives on individual pluck within an awareness of the whole.  With luck, you would join a very small, very accomplished group of advisors to this new venture, all of whom have [...]

A recent post to an art educators list I subscribe to got me thinking about art and action, and when the risks artists take cease to be acceptable modes of expression. The case in question is a Toronto film and video student who carried out the following action: A 24-year-old student, Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson, at [...]

A few weeks ago I was sent an interesting link from my father about an interesting group in Canada that makes large-scale murals from individual fine-art paintings. The results were striking, and got me thinking about the possibilities of using mosaic techniques for Peace Tiles – online as well as using physical Peace Tiles. I [...]

[Crossposted from peacetiles.net] A few days ago my father introduced me to a mural process employed by the Canadian arts group NOA Productions, which has developed what they call “Mural Mosaics.”  They just completed their most recent project for the Town of Cochrane, which engaged nearly 200 area artists in the creation of as many [...]

In getting ready for a small show I am putting up locally, I’ve been obsessing over the archetypes of journeys – and how any “journey” has a beginning, middle, and an end. Rather Oedipal: four legs, two legs, three legs… Anyway, its all a big swill right now though some gems are beginning to emerge. [...]

July has gotten me back in the studio after a June’s worth of cleaning. This month also finds me working to develop some study aids – exercises in color, simplicity, texture. Small constructions on wood panel that reflect some principle of good design and technique. One of the people who is presently inspiring me in [...]