PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
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Love Begins
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@stitch261
"I am Batman...
Today Trump told a kid he was in fact Batman... Let's all pause a moment to think about what that would actually look like and sound like if he were indeed Batman... can we get an animation or meme for this please?!!!@michaelpatrickholt
In the studio@alexandria
Fallout 4 - Official Trailer
Open Call
So as an artist, we are constantly applying to open calls or sending them out for shows we curate.
Here is one you will rarely see.
OPEN CALL FOR STUDIO VISITS
Come spend some time with the artist and his work. We will have drinks. We will eat food. Maybe even talk about Satanic Leaf Tailed Geckos.
Open to anyone who makes art or works in the art world.
Contact [email protected] for requests.
That is all.
What are you going to do with an art degree?
I was often asked that question in my undergraduate years. And at the time, my answer was simple. Make art. But now, as my final thesis show approaches for a masters in fine art I have another response. The question should not be, what are you going to do with the degree? It should be, what have you gone through to get it? Those undergraduate years took walking 8 miles a day, 6 days a week, for 16 weeks per semester, twice a year for 3 years. Not counting when I had to walk from Sandusky to Huron for half a semester that accounts for 4,600 miles. In all Ohio weather. And I did it with a hernia which I still have. It took 10-13 hour days at school. Countless hours at home working. And $60,000 in debt. And a horrible life threatening infection from a busted tooth I couldn't afford to get removed. Living off of $25 per week of food. My graduate studies saw the passing of my father who urged me to never give up on my dreams. His were simple. To be an officer. And he got to do that. I also heard my father say if he had to do what I did, he couldn't have done it. I went to see him in the hospital on a friends dime before he passed. Because my live in girlfriend bailed with 3 days notice, leaving me broke, and unsure if my journey was at an end. But the art department rallied and made that possible because they believed in me. Now as the thesis show approaches on Saturday the 25th, it finishes six long years of dedication. So it is not a question of what I will do. It is a question of what I have done and experienced. It has meaning. And my art is closer to who I am than I could ever have imagined now. The journey is the challenge and the reward. And I am just getting started...
You are welcome internet.
There and back again
I’ve got a backpack. It’s not a particularly striking backpack but to me it’s as though it were an old friend. I bought it almost 18 years ago when my brother Jon and I were homeless for a couple of months during an Ohio winter. On the lake. In Sandusky. Anyone who has lived there will tell you about the punishment.
It was my home for those couple of months. And after that, it carried my photography equipment as a young and then married artist in Virginia.
Then it carried my few belongings to Ohio back again after the divorce about 10 years ago. And right after, it carried books and tools to college everyday, 4 miles each way, as I walked to school in all weather.
I carried in the front pouch my good juju plastic bag of toys my kids had given me. For good luck.
These last two years it has been all over DC to school and elsewhere. To Baltimore and NYC twice.
You can’t explain an object like that. But it can sure as shit explain you…
Back into the Jungle
The end of the road is approaching. Six long and dedicated years are about to be completed and I will receive a Master’s Degree. And in an unforeseen twist of weird, I will be living in Virginia again. It was after all Virginia I left in the first place to pursue art and a degree, and to scare the shit out of people in professional haunted houses. Horrible waves of dread wash over me when I realize that although I am just down the road from DC, there are no bars in Virginia, I have no knowledge of where to get craft beer now, and my former employer VA ABC is just down the street. I keep telling myself, do not let the concrete, multitudes of shopping centers within walking distance, blazing high speed internet, and delivery lull you into a false and dangerous sense of ease. Just beyond the buildings and concrete is the jungle. Inhabited by all manner of strange savage and gentle people. Anything could happen. Stay on your toes and keep an even eye. Be ready... But at least I am close enough to go into the National Mall whenever I feel like it, and yet far enough to escape the zombies. At least I’m not living next to the military biomedical facility anymore. I’m sure that’s where it will start. Good-bye ground zero. But I will be back when it happens, fight my way through the now over run compound, find the secret lab, hit the switch on the self-destruct sequence, and catch the super-secret underground train to the final boss. Which to my calculations and line of sight from my 12th floor apartment balcony, is the Mormon Temple just peeking out of the tree line. That’s where I will fight the mutated and resurrected remains of Joseph Smith. World saved.
Way too cool.
"Freedom will not perish with a whimper. It will be murdered to thunderous applause."
Digging in the Dirt
Memories are only fragments of what really happens. We do not remember things as clearly as most believe. Experiences are turned into fragments, associated with previous experiences, catalogued away in bits inside our grey matter, and those bits color future experiences with their mythology. I can remember when I was being shown the apartment I currently live in, I walked out onto the balcony and I believe the thought was, “So much for the view.” The apartment is on the 12th floor and it overlooks a large expanse of wooded communities that stretch as far as the eye can see. You can view the Mormon Temple in the distance, and across the street is a military biomedical facility that I am absolutely certain will be ground zero for the zombie apocalypse. But below me, just beyond the parking spaces, behind a fence is a landscape company. The ground is often muddy, and there is a mountain of mulch that on wet days smells like complete ass.
In time I didn’t mind the smell as much, you get used to it. And, every morning, I would start my coffee, and step outside to the balcony and have the morning smoke. While I did so, I would watch the men working down below. The little bulldozer they used to move mulch and such is one of those one-seater jobs and not meant for much other than small things.
Yesterday, I awoke at around 8:30 am and as usual stepped outside while the coffee brewed. As soon as I lit the smoke I noticed a large number of police cars blocking the entire area. I remember thinking that perhaps it was an accident, and began to survey the area for the wreck. But I didn’t see it. Instead, I began to notice the landscape dotted with officers, with guns drawn. Some were in full riot gear with shields, all of them were taking positions on the landscape company’s property.
It was puzzling at first, and I even entertained the idea it was some sort of drill before realizing how stupid that sounded. I mean, everyone was still working it seemed. The little bull dozer was working away dropping piles of cut log portions by the mulch pile. But then I saw other workers being led out of the place by officers. And it hit me; they were surrounding the bulldozer.
I learned later that the man driving the bulldozer had just earlier snapped at work, pulled out a shotgun, fired it into the mulch and then proceeded to point it at another employee. And now, as I watched, he was digging a hole in the ground around himself going as deep as he could. I remember saying out loud, “Doesn’t he know he’s making a kill box for himself? That’s where you go to die when the men with guns are all above you with clear shots.” The metaphor did not escape me that the man was actually digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole.
I will spare you most of the three and a half hours I spent watching all of this. Except one detail. At the very end, I watched him get out of the truck he had replaced the bulldozer with earlier, walk out of the pit he had made, and casually stroll along a short distance as guns stayed aimed upon him the entire way. He seemed so care free as he did so. Just swinging the gun like it was a faithful old rag. And then he disappeared from my site, and I heard the shot. When I saw everyone stand down, I knew what had happened. The shot hadn’t come from any of the officers or men in fatigues with rifles. (Although there were at least 8 shots from them earlier to disable the mini bulldozer.) It had come from his own weapon.
I took pictures of almost all of those three hours. I felt that if I was trapped in my apartment, and this was going down, then someone should document it. I wasn’t even really afraid that a stray bullet may hit me. It was extremely unlikely being on the 12th floor, but not impossible. I remember being excited though, that I was watching armored vehicles and people in military gear taking positions. Like it was a movie, but for real. You just never really expect to see that kind of thing for real. Even more so how it ended. And even less expected, was the truth that when it was over, I didn’t feel anything at all. No fear, no panic, not even horror. There was nothing.
But I also knew, that from now on, every time I look down as I stand on the balcony, that it will always be the place where I watched it happen. Later that night, as I watched television, it seemed everything I watched had some sort of hostage situation or stand-off. I kept having to turn it off. Not because it brought out emotions, but more a feeling of loathing and dread in my stomach that the television had it all wrong.
This morning, when I stepped outside, everything was back to normal. Forensics had taken all evidence that anything had happened at all. The same men from the landscape company were working doing the same jobs below. Traffic eased on down the road, and the military facility was business as usual. Business as usual. Except for that hole in the ground from the day before. It was still there.
There was something deeply disturbing about the whole thing, how time just keeps pushing on, and how the world around us does as well. But I knew something had happened. Yet anyone after me in this apartment won’t see that landscape below the same way I do. It’s my experience, and even though it was experienced by others, all of them are different. It’s not the same at all. We merely share a moment, not an experience. We bring all previous experiences and fragments with us, include our present and our surroundings, our own perceptions, sensations and instincts, and motivations. You cannot share an experience.
The numbness I wasn’t aware of yesterday, became a real physical presence wrapping around my head. Today, I could feel the numbness. I was aware that something profound had happened to me, but I just couldn’t process it yet. Somewhere somehow I would make some sort of sense of it, learn something from it. But right now, all I could think was, “You never know when you’re going to wake up to crazy and step in it.” And I knew for certain, I didn’t ever want to be that guy digging the hole for himself. He could have ran, given up, anything… But he couldn’t see or didn’t want a way out. And that stroll I watched him make said he was good with that.
Even now, I know that I cannot remember everything about that day. Pieces are there, images, sounds, placements, moments, but not all of it. Despite shooting 144 pictures. And I know in time those fragments will fade, but they will color future experiences despite that. It becomes part of the mythology.
I went to the school today, and the sounds of sirens made me cringe every time I heard them. And in D.C. you hear an awful lot of them. And for every one I heard, in my mind, I wondered, “What madness are you racing to meet today?” Stay safe out there.
Open Call
Do you share the pain of most other artists, and own a glorious stack of rejection letters? Here is your chance to show them off in all their beauty and strike back at those who rejected you! It’s time to put those letters to work for YOU and have fun doing it.
Studio 252 is proud to announce an open call for submissions for the Thank You for Applying exhibit open March 5th – March 16th curated by Jenny Wu and Michael Patrick Holt. We will be displaying all the rejection letters we receive as an installation. All entries must be postmarked by no later than February 18th.
Here is what we are looking for:
Formal rejection letters or emails - This could be for exhibits, residencies, college applications, grants, jobs, internships, club memberships and many other experiences!
What we are NOT looking for:
Letters or notes signifying the end of your relationships, your parents’ neglect, or any other highly personal content.
Everything else is fair game! However we reserve the right to “reject” anything that may be too personal on these grounds. Just print them out and mail them in! Practically everything will be accepted. Private information such as mailing addresses or email addresses, social security numbers and such should either be blacked out before sending, or we will do it for you to protect the innocent.
Mail all entries to:
Gallery 252 c/o Jaylynn Saure
Department of Art
Katzen Arts Center, Room 101
4400 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20016
Any questions should be directed to either Jenny Wu or Michael Patrick Holt at:
An appendage for your face
The mother of my children emailed the other day to ask if I knew of anywhere should could buy special effects make-up. My youngest daughter has recently experimented with make-up to some really nice effect. But she needs better products. Of course I do! I emailed a few places to her, and gave descriptions of each place and what they offered. But, knowing from experience how much product is out there and what it does or does not do, I felt she deserved a side note.
“And as always, there's a lot of products, completely overwhelming if you don't know what you need or want. So any questions ask me. I can tell you what to get. For instance, "Lilly wants to grow facial hair." Answer: "A pack of loose hair. And spirit gum. Spirit Gum Remover."
“Or my personal fave, "Lilly wants to grow an appendage. On her face." Now you're talking... Let's get to work.”
Yep.
Another man's shoes?
I am always complaining about how hard it is to find a really, really, good pair of shoes. I was a teen of the late 80’s. I admit it a lot. I’m aware of the connotations it brings. I will freely confess there are horrifying pictures of myself in polka dot pants with an absurdly high hairstyle. I will not talk about hair here however, that could fill several more writings. But what you do not see in the picture are the shoes that I am wearing. There were kids that would pass me in the mall who would whisper to each other, “Nice shoes!” One benefit of the amount of crazy fashions at the time was the diversity of foot wear. And unlike ordering things blindly online and hoping they are a comfortable shoe, there was plenty of diversity in the shoe store. Now, not so much.
So, I thrift a lot. I love it. Especially vintage clothing consignment stores. There’s a great one in Cleveland called Flower Child. If you ever there, I recommend it highly. Here in DC I tend to go to Unique Thrift stores at various locations in the area. They all have something really fun that I have only witnessed at these locations, a bazaar. A real bazaar.
Over the break this winter, I was shopping with the artist Jenny Wu, (you can find a link to her work on my site), at Unique and there was these comfortable looking, round toed, soft (and I mean soft) brown leather shoes. The color was close to the look of a dark stained oak. Well worn, but taken care of. I didn’t even try them on, they were my size, and I had to have them. Six-bucks. I replaced the broken shoe laces about a week later and slipped them on… Heaven. These are without a doubt the most comfortable pair of shoes I have owned in over two decades. They’re a pair of Clarks. And they are what I would want to be wearing in the Zombie Apocalypse.
But what struck me was the old phrase concerning walking in another man’s shoes. That you cannot really know a person unless you’ve had the experiences they have. But what if the real trick is being comfortable in another man’s shoes. Are they a good fit? What comparable support or shape of the feet from the miles or lack of is there? How does this then mold the feel of those shoes? Maybe there’s no connection at all! But an amusing thought none the less. For now, I really, really, love walking in these shoes. Perhaps there is hope for footwear after all.
You are confused. You do not know what Abstract is. Stop it. Now.
