Forest Falls

New Digs

I just relocated to a new city (Redlands, California) and am finding that I can't make much progress on any large-scale/long-term projects until I'm better acquainted with my new surroundings. Partly to avoid neglecting this blog while I get familiar with this place, and partly to keep my skills sharp, I've decided to shoot some stuff intuitively, without any specific intent or planning, while I'm out walking through my neighborhood and the surrounding area. These images will probably differ from those that I will take once I'm familiar with the area, so I'm interested to see what comes of it.

Benches at the Redlands Bowl:

"¡¿Que Barrio?!" El Centro entry

"Poles #1" Gelatin silver prints, plexiglass, wood. Dimensions variable.

This is on display at Johnny Cab, the site of the El Centro half of the "¡¿Que Barrio?!" exhibition. It and its partner (which is on display at the Mexicali half of the exhibition) make up a two-part series called "Poles" that attempts to study opposites and the epistemological queries raised by such a study. For example, can each opposing part be defined not just in relation to the other, but also by its own traits? Do they even possess their own traits, or only those that can be contrasted with the other's?

¡¿Que Barrio?!

"¡¿Que Barrio?!" is an upcoming bi-national exhibition that I'm participating in. It's being held in two venues, Johnny Cab in El Centro and Mexicali Rose in Mexicali, with each artist contributing one piece of work for each gallery. A very large and diverse group of artists is involved so it promises to be an awesome show. It opens April 30th in El Centro and May 7th in Mexicali.

A Book About Death part 2

The A Book About Death exhibition opened a few weeks ago and I've since had the chance to take a couple shots of the installation. It took a group of about five of us as many hours to hang all 500+ cards but the end result looked great.

North wall, half of the original works:


South wall, the other half:


Local contributions, including work from Elizabeth Lopez, Emmanuel Ferraes and other good artists whose links I don't know:


My piece:

A Book About Death

A Book About Death is an exhibition of mail art by hundreds of different artists. It originated in New York last year, where each of the 500 participants received a copy of the other 499 artists' contributions. Thus all 500 artists not only collected the show's entire catalogue but are now able to restage A Book About Death at new places and with additions from new artists.

With Sheila Dollente and Bibiana Padilla Maltos bringing the exhibition to SDSU-Calexico's Steppling Gallery this week, I've had the chance to add my own work to the show and am very excited to be involved in it. It opens on Wednesday, March 10 at 6:30 p.m.

These links have more information on the show's origins and where it's headed next:
http://abookaboutdeath.blogspot.com
http://abookaboutdeathmexicaliimperialvalley.blogspot.com

Photos from Saturday's installation. By Joshua Novinger:

More to come after opening night.

Mexicali Rose opening

Last night was the opening of the "Dentro y Fuera de la Pared: 7 Artistas del Otro Lado" exhibition at Mexicali Rose. I've no shots from the opening (I didn't feel like walking from the border to the gallery lugging my camera bag with me) but I've been sitting on some pictures I took to document the building of my pieces. I also took a couple rough snaps of them after they were installed.

The blueprint:


Makeshift 60° clamps:


Clamps in use:



Gluing, step by step:




Painted:


Then came the printing:


Drilling holes in plexiglass, not as challenging as I feared it'd be:


And finally installed:



These are titled "No-Color Wheels." They represent a combination of two ideas. One was an early proposed concept for the show which would've had each of us exploring the ways we use color in our work. For me, of course, color doesn't enter into the equation, so as a cop-out I thought I'd shoot subjects with recognizable colors (fire extinguishers for red, traffic cones for orange, etc.) and see if presenting them in their natural order (red-orange-yellow-green-blue-violet) would be enough to let the viewer connect the dots. The other idea was a long-gestating interest in documenting a continuous cycle and displaying the resulting images on a structure that mimicked that continuity. Each panel of each hexagon, then, corresponds to one of the six primary and secondary colors, and presenting them in a sequence with no starting or ending point (supposedly) maintains their cyclical nature. Originally my plan was to hang these structures in the middle of the room, thus allowing viewers to walk 360° around them, but the ceiling wouldn't hold the screws so I had to resort to hanging them close to the wall where the screws could be drilled into that wooden rail on the ceiling. Bummer.

Exhibition at Mexicali Rose

January 29th will see the opening of an exhibition in Mexicali that I've been invited to participate in. Everyone involved is doing great stuff. I'm currently hard at work on the pieces I will be contributing; by the end of the week I'll be posting some images of them and hopefully some documentation of their construction.

CLOEMTPE

"CLOEMTPE" from San Francisco State University's Senior Open House in April 2008. 8 silver gelatin prints sealed onto wood with (I think) rubber cement and Mod Podge. This was shown in the Martin Wong Gallery with the work voted best in the show. I should've posted this before the Obscured Eye work to maintain the proper chronology, but I'm showing it now because it was my first attempt at anything sculptural.



From the left:


From the right:

Obscured Eye exhibition, October 2009

"Person Amidst Places: One Through Three" from last October's Obscured Eye exhibition at San Diego State University's Calexico campus. Installation consisting of 18 silver gelatin prints sealed onto wood with resin.

Entire installation:


Details: