book

the book:

more to follow.

installation pictures

analog to follow soon.

The Groupie and The Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle

This is it!

These are my degree project pieces in the order I began them.  It's interesting to see the progression and also where I stopped taking it farther.  Today I'm setting up my installation.  I finished sewing the pathway last night but I haven't finished sewing the room.

I need to get transparencies printed after work.

And I DESPERATELY need to find a SIM student to help me rent out lights with coloured gells.  So if any of you know anyone in SIM please please let me know.  9784573126.

∆∆❍∇∆  kisses from the underground

F.U.N.K.

a lil' mixtape to accompany the invitation
The Raver by The Troggs, one of my favourite bands. Reading Lester Bangs' writings about them made me crazy and now I can't have it any other way but this honest, raw, dirty way. If anyone can find "I Want You," it's worth their time.

Lekar Ham Diwana Dil by Asha Bhosle and Kishore Kumar for epically intense dancing mania

Jimmy Mack MARTHA REEVES AND THE VANDELLASszzz there's a video of twiggy dancing to this on youtube.

For fucked-up pre Love-making ridiculous seducing:
Let's Do It Again THE STAPLES SINGERS, a group who happens to include my one true love--Mavis.

Let's Straighten It Out by Latimore. it's blues/r&b from 1974.

Astral Weeks by Van Morrison of the album of the same title


and to leave it at an up:
F.U.N.K. by Betty Davis--one of my top three most amazing women of all time. get ready to have your mind DESTROYED.

fuck you

This is the start for my invitation to my degree project installation. i'm going to print it out and write over it and probably do a drawing and then put it back into the computer with that stuff and print it out. It's at a really low resolution and i'm going to print it out small and it's going to be good eventually.




For printmaking i threw my plate in the acid and let it eat away at my etching for an hour and i'm excited to see how the stuff i saved with hard ground is gonna print. i find this process very appropriate and reflective of what's going on with me mentally regarding that situation.
you know
i'm also going to do a piece on the idea of accepting our animalistic nature, a neanderthal woman with her legs spread apart.
and i'm doing pieces that are sort of odes to my current iconography.
i also think my new header is perfect.

some visual creations that stemmed from this hand

I've found a new visual lover. He doesn't know it but I'm fine with that.

Will Sweeney
http://alakazamlabel.com/




ROBERT CRUMB'S OPENING IS TONIGHT AND I AM SO EXCITED!!


degree project work so far

i've got an itch in my throat

i keep feeling earthquakes

i am having an insane time trying to concentrate on this research report.  i'm taking care of a bunch of heavy emotional shit right now and it's really hard to figure out what should be my priority.  

i've been daydreaming all day and asking everyone i see weird theoretical questions.  i'm an inch away from getting sick.  what the fuck.  how 'bout my body just fucking sucks it up and stays healthy, huh?

let's get together tonight

C'mon Everybody
Eddie Cochran

I've been really getting off on old rock and roll this year.
Link Wray, Dick Dale, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Wanda Jackson, Ernie Chaffin, Gene Vincent, Bill Haley, Carl Perkins.
It's attractive to me because it's easy to dance to and it's pretty badass in the context of its time.
I still don't like Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis and nothing's gonna change my mind on that.

By Thursday I'm usually completely worn-out. Wednesday is my break-down day. Last week was pretty bad in Advanced Drawing. I felt really guilty and so much of an under-achiever and then Margot yelled at me and I started crying in class and I just can't wait until all of this is over. Maybe I will stay in Boston an extra day over Thanksgiving break and try to catch up for those two junior classes. Last Thursday my mama came down to visit me after class and we walked around the North and South ends and Chinatown. I revel in the real dirty, gritty parts of cities and she hates it, but I still went the same way I normally do, down that loading area, stench of fish and garbage, concrete so filthy you wouldn't want to pick up a quarter if it was there. We went down into the Channel Cafe (positives: really pretty, well-designed, has live music and a gallery! negatives: does not have any liquor other than beer and wine, is expensive, is out in the middle of nowhere) to check out what was in the gallery but what we were REALLY in the area for was the ICA. The Tara Donovan exhibit was amazing!
It was a total visual trip. I was like, WHY IS THIS BLURRY??? It shouldn't be blurry.

All of a sudden I'm having trouble with the Johnny Cupcake's design. I don't like his line and I really don't want what I think is cool to be sold to the people that buy his stuff. How bad is that? Yeah, it's bad.

me in a year:



i can't get over this.

i'm sorry.


I got a squash court for the senior show! I feel good about degree project. I'm havin' fun, baby.

heavy heavy

DO YOU LIKE THE EDITED BIT? YES or NO?




I feel like everyone carries around this immense sadness. It sits around us, hangs off our limbs like some fucked fog.

I'm beginning to SEE what I want to do with degree project.
I'm doing an installation, and there's no space on the 11th floor that's all that conducive, so I might have some work up there, but have my REAL thing somewhere else in Tower. If in Tower.
I hope that the location doesn't discourage people from checking it out.
My group in class was really helpful and I felt inspired after talking with them. I'm definitely going to project STUFF on top of other stuff and I want to make a teepee or some sort of structure people can go inside of and feel really peaceful amidst all of the sound and visual stimuli.
I want to make a headdress and matchbox altars.

On another note,
here are two more pictures of the unreal fabulous Lady Jenny





AND Heaven by Dead Meadow.

I just want to skim right off the radar for a while.
New York City

my art has been a direct reflection of my life

RTX
Cheap Wine Time


and "Knightmare and Mane"

This woman kicks so much ass. Who WOULDN'T want to be her??
I introduce you to: Jennifer Herrema




I've "discovered" RTX through my friend Amanda. Who is a new friend as of our "interview" two weeks ago. I feel like I should post my topic proposal for Degree Project so you guys know how all this fits together. Amanda is about RTX like I am about Spindrift or Orange Sunshine. We just get injected with this unreal excitement and convey so much insane enthusiasm about them that the person we're talking to rides on our energy straight to giving the group a listen.
Okay, here is my topic proposal. Hope it's not boring.
HAHA

The Groupie and the Rock & Roll Lifestyle
I’m teetering on the verge of completely immersing myself in the shallow, delightfully wicked pool of the rock and roll lifestyle known as the reality of tour. I open my arms to its delicious trappings. It’s been several years since I’ve dared to dream of this unconventional lifestyle, but from sheer passion and self-belief I finally managed to crawl to the edge of this fucked oasis and lap at its outer ripples.
Rock and roll is a poisonous, addictive culture, fettered with romanticism and glamorization. Rock and rollers are outlaws not by choice but by the necessities of their passion. Unlike any other existence, musicians are encouraged to wallow in negative feelings. The only true romantic bit of the rock and roll lifestyle is being in a bed of creativity, where it is conceived, and being a part of that conception. And that bit overrides almost all the darkness, the unnatural stress on the physical that tour demands, the emotional rollercoaster, running dry and yearning.
At 17 I found that there was a name for the way I felt about music. I wanted to be a groupie because music had saved me and had grown into such a beautiful beast within me that it gnawed at every inch of my expression and that from then on, I knew I could only make it with people who felt he same as I did. Shows became a platform during which I could crawl out of my stomach and become this pure thing; it was like I could finally breathe.
It took years to get to where I am now, at 21, and I’m still sort of floating in the middle, trying to live two realities, trying to balance priorities with this innate need for the live music experience. For those of us that wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for music, we are intrinsically tied with it. There is a community whose members all possess that same edge. The communal nature of music is unique, as it affects multiple senses and willingly or unwillingly involves anyone in the area. It is malleable, alive, and interactive. It is a passion that everyone loves but few live. It takes an enormous amount of drive to live music, you have to let every atom of your being become absolutely possessed by it, it has to consume your life completely, you have to willfully give yourself over. There is no pretending that you might have the freedom to do anything but. This is why I can never completely be myself, never be happy or comfortable with someone who doesn’t share this passion. Music is in my blood, it is my savior and my lover, it is everything. People who don’t feel this way will never fully understand that. I have no choice, I didn’t choose this path, I accepted it.
I find that I have an incredible amount of love to give, and I want to give it to the people who create what moves me. As much as I want to be their muse, I need them to be mine. The relationship between a musician and a true groupie is a symbiotic one.

I want to visually explore my experiences as a groupie, and I plan to do this in a myriad of formats, culminating in an installation that will utilize the sense of hearing. I am especially interested in creating transgressive art and manipulating the viewer into having an interactive experience with my work. I will explore the different aspects of being a groupie and will discuss these aspects with other groupies. Topics of discussion may include, but are not limited to, how being possessed by this manic love affects our lives, how we see the world, how we create our own world, the addictive nature of rock and roll, inspiring and being inspired, the aesthetic, the image, the love and the loneliness. I’d like to give people a look inside one of my existences.
I’m a collector of images, and I want to continue to collect images that speak to my topic and fit them together. I will stay away from literal interpretation and will create and use a dictionary of personal symbols to represents concepts and people. I will read memoirs and watch documentaries and make lists of the aesthetics and potential symbols, and look at how they relate to my own.
I’m not interested in using traditional formats to present my art, and this project will also be an exploration of alternative presentation formats for my illustrations. I plan to work chronologically through my history with the rock and roll subculture.
I want my art, like humour, to shock me in a dry, honest way. I like art that involves the fourth dimension of time and decays and disintegrates and that is functional. I need to keep my art organic and imperfect. I need it to be in a constant state of flux because I cannot allow my creations to be stagnant.

Amanda fits into this because she was in Pamela des Barres' latest book "Let's Spend the Night Together," she's not really a GROUPIE, she just happens to have relationships with musicians, and she's the coolest rock and roll girlfriend EVER.  She's also a professional photographer so it was incredibly enlightening to talk with her about how she goes about balancing and interweaving her passions.  I aspire to be like her one day.  Soon.  It'll be soon.

Talk to me

the pretty finished 7" wraparound.  I'm going to play around with the sky in the the upper left because I liked it better left white.

Since I'm a complete junkie for music, I want to turn each and every one of you into an equally obsessed nutter.  It's a little bit like being a religious fanatic I guess.

I WANT TO SHOW YOU GOD

cuz god is love

"god dog sex death" - Serena's motorcycle

let us begin.

"Screaming Gun" by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Wow that was a hard decision.  I changed my mind three times.  I guess it's not TECHNICALLY the first song I've shared with you, since I just uploaded Cheval Sombre's "I Sleep" and posted it as an edit in the previous post.

I was going to do a classic, "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" by the Temptations, but I figured you've probably heard that before.

So here's something new.

It has harmonica.

This is my absolutely rejected test piece for Degree Project:

 

I agree with the general consensus that this expression does not correspond nor relate my experience whatsoever.  It's aesthetically decent.  Minus the background.  But now I'm in this thing where I'm drawing thirty feet of doodles, on assignment to come across my style.  In my senior year, with a month left to come up with two pieces.