...hello

Wow um. I haven't been on here in over a year.

Here's what's been going on with me:

-I'm working as a private Japanese tutor, and as an ACT Prep tutor with a company called StudyPoint. I also do freelance translation occasionally.

-I am still living in my parents' house, because part-time tutoring gigs don't even pay for groceries, let alone gas or rent.

-I volunteer once a week at a place called WordPlay in Northside, which offers homework and academic help to local students, free of charge. I also run the bookbinding guild there.

-My grandmother died at the beginning of January, after a short struggle with lymphoma. I just got back a few days ago from a month's stay in Sweden, where I attended the funeral and helped to go through her effects.

-I have not made any major comics or art pieces since I graduated in 2012 (I'm not counting that video piece I did for FotoFocus, because I started working on that while still in school). I've done a few drawings here and there, one painting commission (that I traded for a custom-made cape), and more than a handful of hand-bound books.

-I am still a coordinator with The Denton Affair. In fact, after this Saturday, I will be the most senior coordinator in terms of time spent in the position. Our current theater liaison is leaving, and our art director stepped down in December. The new art director is extremely capable and I think the new liaison will do fine, but it's weird to think that I'm suddenly the veteran out of the three.

The art I DO make is posted on my tumblr. It's sort of time-consuming to post art here. I've been thinking about revamping this blog to do fountain pen reviews (because I suddenly have enough pens to do review of them [I DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM]) but that, too, is somewhat time-consuming, so we'll see.

Haven't done much this winter...

But I did take some pictures.

Pony.

Anybody remember my response to Chris Collins' "Pony" video? Here it is again:

It was recently shown, along with Chris' original, at Chicago's Suitable Video MDW Fair screening room, curated by Scott Wolniak. And someone wrote a blurb about it!

This is pretty exciting to me, considering I've never had anyone write about this work. I don't think I've ever even written about it, besides the YouTube description. So, uh. Thanks, Robert Chase Heishman of the Chicago Artist Writers!

Visual Influence

Here are some images I like to look at:

Uhhh

I haven't made much work this summer. I haven't felt able to, for a number of reasons. I am slowly, SLOWLY marching my way towards something I MIGHT be able to show at the CAC in October for Fotofocus. We'll see.

But I have actually managed to paint something. It's weird, because I'm not really a painter. I like to draw, that is what I'm good at. Painting not so much.

Here are some shitty cell phone pics of what I'm working on. The bottom one I started today, the top one has been in progress on and off since late May.

Acrylic on canvas and acrylic on masonite (I think? It was in the "free stuff" pile) respectively.

 

 

I have comic ideas but no motivation to draw anything. And like I said, gif work is progressing at a snail's pace (it's not even gifs anymore, it's webcam performance).

This hasn't been an interesting update, sorry. Uh. I got nothing. My cat snores? 

Drag and other shenanigans.

This is one of the numbers I'm doing in the spring drag show:

Bring on the Disney.

More gifs are upcoming, but in the meantime, check out the gym I shot some of them in. It's at my sister's school which was built in 1929 or something, and the gym just SCREAMS "90s high school flick." John Hughes, where are you?

Book I just got that I'm super excited to read: Steve Martin's An Object of Beauty. I'm also midway through Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential and I finished Chelsea Handler's Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang the other night. It wasn't quite as funny as her standup, but I enjoyed her family anecdotes.

Spring Break!

The quarter is over! The sun is shining! My room needs cleaning!

There are new gifs up on my tumblr. I will be continuing this project next quarter as well.

I will start work on my rocky horror comic this week, as it is due before April 22. I will be trying to sell it at SPACE in Columbus then. It has also become an honors project... so there's that...

WHAT I AM READING:

Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf
The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot
Lifting Belly by Gertrude Stein
Orality and Literacy by Walter J. Ong
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Also, guys! Ladies! People who don't fall in either of those categories! The Denton Affair will be doing a shadowcast performance of The Big Lebowski on March 24th at the Esquire! The tickets are going fast, there's information on the website about how to purchase them! Go go go!

Photo of the day:

Some dapper DAAPers at the Refresh this Page opening a while ago.

THESIS, UPDATES, COMICS

IN THAT ORDER.

Hi. It's been a while. How have you been? I've been better myself, but at least I have my voice back. A nasty cold seems to have been making its rounds of the entire population of Cincinnati, it seems, and I am no exception.

So, first things first: THESIS. I just turned in my draft to my professors, and had my visual critique. I'm in the second round of the Dry Run show so I have a week to think about presentation and hanging the work... but I'll leave you with some images of my favorite pieces, and a link to the google doc of the draft if you feel inclined to read it.

UPDATES: I have been working on gifs in my photography class, and I think they're turning out pretty rad if I do say so myself. They're big, so I'll post one here (EDIT: I'm not sure why this one isn't animating but just go to my tumblr and look at them, guh).

Also, Cry-Baby and The Big Lebowski are coming up soon. Here's where you'll find more information on that.

COMICS: I've been working on the Order of the Golden Bear wordpress site, and while it's not quite up and running yet, I did put up all of Third Culture Kid. So go and read, and follow, and be on the lookout for more things! Also, Alison Bechdel will have a new book out soon and I've never been so excited.

Updates

Classes I am taking this quarter: intaglio printmaking (again), intermediate digital photography (again). Graphic novels (literature, not studio). Japanese. Thesis.

I am in the process of creating a comics collective (if it can be called that when it's just two people) with my friend Alex Hananel. It's called The Order of the Golden Bear and there's nothing on the site just yet but we're working on it. We're looking to book a table at SPACE in Columbus in April, too.

Comic I just finished: Third Culture Kid.

Comic I am starting: a Rocky Horror infographic, sort of.

Hetero-Types: Electron Microscope Tour

I'm late with this, it happened over a week ago, but... the tour with the Hetero-Types show to the Engineering Research Center's scanning electron microscope went really well! It was David Rosenthal, Laura Fisher, a couple other photographers from DAAP, and me. Dr. Rosales and his graduate assistant Manna were very accommodating with us, they didn't even mind us yelling "TAKE THAT PICTURE" every few seconds.

The best part for me, though, was helping Dr. Rosales prepare the samples. In order to be properly viewed by a scanning electron microscope, samples must be conductive--in this case, coated with a gold-palladium alloy. Samples were cut down, affixed to carbon tape, and placed in a vacuum chamber. Electricity was run through the gold-palladium, which caused it to vaporize and settle on the samples (it also glowed purple, which was cool to see).When I was smaller I had a kid's microscope, complete with slides, and I got rather good at putting together various organic and inorganic slides. So I really enjoyed putting on gloves and cutting little finicky bits of things and using tweezers to settle them just so on the dime-sized sample holders.

Actually viewing them in the microscope was something else, though. One of the samples was a fresh leaf from my creeping charlie houseplant. The leaf was fresh enough to still retain water--which made it more vulnerable to disintegration.The higher the magnification, the more focused the beam of electrons becomes. If the sample is improperly coated, or if it retains too much water, it will start to disintegrate. Which is what happened here.

The other samples were: a housefly, a lacewing fly, the inside of a seed pod, a gingko leaf and a butterfly wing.

This is (presumably) pollen, caught on a fly's back.

Flies are hairy, hairy bugs.

Closeup of a gingko leaf.

Scales of a butterfly wing.

Broken scale on a butterfly wing.

The spongy inside of a seed pod.

All the magnifications are specified on the images. These are not all the images, just the ones I liked best. All 26 can be viewed on my Photobucket account if you want to see more.

Hetero-Types Opening!

Oh my goodness gracious. Prairie Gallery's show Hetero-Types: Science in Contermporary Art-Making is opening on Saturday! Yes, this is the show I co-curated with David Rosenthal. It's been a fun time. I'm actually heading out right now to do last-minute things like labels and price lists. Anyone in the Cinci area should come. The show is sponsored by Yelp, so you can probably find it here.

presented by:       Three artists explore the use of scientific imaging techniques in producing photography, painting and video.   Opening Reception Saturday November 12, 7-9 pm     Northside Second Saturday features special events and exhibitions at: Comet, Nvision, Thundersky, Chicken Lays an Egg, Helltown Workshop, Sidewinder, Cryptogram, Mayday, Northside Surplus, Fabricate, Prairie, CANCO, Take the Cake, Sweat Peace Bakery, Painted Fish, 3 Legged Dog, Shop Therapy, Northside Tavern (5-9 happy hour), Ruttle and Neltner Florist   Prairie is pleased to present work by Cincinnati artist Kimberly Burleigh, San Francisco artist Caren Alpert and Arizona artist David Tinapple. Kimberly Burleigh employs a unique blend of methods from both fields of art and science in producing her oil paintings and watercolors. She explores her interest in the behavior of light across the surface of and through liquids by creating computer simulated models of liquid surfaces lit by artificial light sources. She then transfers these "still lives" onto canvas using the traditional methods and tools of oil painting. Her final works are, in one sense, straight recordings of computer generated shapes, and in another, highly stylized abstractions of the real world rendered with limited color palettes which evoke the experiments of mid-20th century color field painters. Caren Alpert, "Cake Sprinkles" San Francisco artist Caren Alpert produces microscopic images of food in addition to her work as a commercial photographer. In producing images of food for the advertising industry, Alpert recognized an increasing disparity between the unnatural eating behaviors promoted through advertisements and a more balanced relationship between people and their food supply based on a comprehensive understanding of the origin and nature of food. For her, placing a "camera" close enough to edible objects to see their microscopic structures became a way to better understand food. The natural fibers and visual patterns present in the structure of certain vegetables shown in Alpert's images are not only beautiful, but transform objects of consumption into objects which invite admiration and contemplation. In a similar fashion, her images of cake sprinkles and other manufactured foods provide reason to reconsider the casual consumption of substances whose appearance evokes food science and genetic engineering laboratories. David Tinapple sheds light on how human perception has been dramatically altered by the type and quantity of media which pervades our lives. Part engineer, he employs manipulated image capturing devices to produce video and still images which are visually stunning and which also question our reliance on imagery as a substitute for observation and experience of the real world. His "slit scan" images, for example, were produced by turning his car into a giant scanner. Equipped with this oversized imaging device, Tinapple drove his car down typical house-lined streets, capturing every detail of these bucolic scenes over the course of several minutes per image. On their own, these pictures appear to be simple panoramic photographs capturing a single moment in time. When the nature of their origin is understood, however, the idea of the photograph as a representation of the real world feels like a grand deception. Tinapple's perfectly still images showing people interacting with each other and the environment are actually the product of a narrative fabricated by his inventive imaging techniques.    Scanning Electron Microscope Image by Hyo-Jick Choi     Learn about and use UC's Scanning Electron Microscope on November 18.   In conjunction with Heterotypes: Science in Contemporary Art Making, Prairie will offer an interactive tour of the Scanning Electron Microscope Facility at UC's College of Engineering. Participants will learn about the capabilities of the microscope and will be allowed to choose from a variety of samples on hand at the lab to examine with the microscope. Participants will be able to download and save images from the visit for their own use. The tour will begin at 12:00 at Room 316 of the Engineering Research Center on UC's Main Campus and will conclude at 1:00 pm. Registration is limited to 10! A reservation fee of $20 must be received in order to hold your spot!       Register for Materials Science Lab Tour    Hope to see you there! (Text copied from Prairie press release.)

Exhibit 99

So I got a piece into Exhibit 99, to be held at RUA Studio/ Gallery in Dayton. This piece, to be exact:

I need to get a frame this weekend. I'll probably hit up St. Vincent de Paul for that.

Also, three Rocky Horror performances this weekend: two on Saturday, at 9pm and midnight, and one on Monday, at 9.

...that is all.

Art updates etc

Things I have been working on recently:

-a comic called Satin Passion, which is the remains of my failed 24-hour-comics endeavors (and which I work on when I have down time between classes, or something... it won't be done for a while, in other words)
-my 12-page comic for comics independent study, which will be autobiographical in nature
-work for my internet art class (in this case, gifs, which can be seen here... and my second project will involve YouTube videos and possibly helium-voice... and of course the What I Did on the Net Today posts)

Things I haven't been working on recently but are still in progress and that I'll return to eventually, sometime:

-my YouTube stills
-the small hand-bound non-sequitur sketchbook things I was doing for advanced drawing spring quarter
-writing and poetry

Things I am doing constantly:

-sketchbook stuff
-taking pictures with my cell phone, since it's the handiest camera I have