Art as Index (the fruits of our labor...thanks!!!)

Sending out an SOS

Hey bloggers, I am in need of help/suggestions about my class topic for tomorrow. I am having trouble finding images on the internet and anything off the top of your smart heads would be appreciated.

I am going to show images & talk about the idea of drawing as index - meaning anything that leaves a trace, an imprint, a spill - so it is not about direct marks, but rather the residue of an action or a gesture, like automatism, or the residue of another object or texture, as in a rubbing or a stamp or a fingerprint, or the residue of another image, like a xerox or xerox transfer. I want to somehow tie this all together, I know these things are not necessarily visually related, but there is a thread that connects them. I want the students to experiment with these techniques in class and then work back into them with direct marks for homework. Does this make sense?

If you have suggestions of artists, that would be great, or if this sounds too vague, I am curious to know any thoughts.

I have images of the following already:

Max Ernst frottage
Henri Michaux frottage
Jackson Pollock drip
Morris Louis spill
Ana Mendieta arm drawings

Ned's

It was a bash for the ages at Ned's. From the pale green fluff salad to the beauty of the hot dog structure (see Fairy Butler for pix) it was a night we will not soon forget. Slutty whore squats, carefree roboto moves, wig-wearing (both on the head and below the belt), the dance of the cut: you know who you are. We served birch beer and evil margaritas and sidecars which punished us all through the day yesterday. I am still not quite ok but forging onward in the style of the pioneers. We got to tussle with Lupis, WW, Painter, Necrowench, JD, Heart as Arena, BB, Ed Winkleman & Bambino. Thanks for coming everyone.

Kudos and boingy style love to the ether pals:

Krix and her lovely fez, her satchel o' costumes. Sloth and her beard around the waist/fall on the floor specialness, very sexy, yes.Ham Paw and her hot dog sculpture stylings, her karate chop cuts to the torso. I chop you, you chop me, etc. FB in the big glasses, maker of green fluff, originator of the dances of the world...yes FB, you are my hero. WW, you came alive in the wig, you are the pants-shitter for all times and PD...................you know it! You are a busty lass with the robot soul.

Corny dearest you were missed. Yes. You are the hot dog of the universe.

My Outfit

I have put it on already so it will be sufficiently stained by party time. My hairpiece will be set off nicely by the beige-nude hue. I will be nimble. I will be.

Pleasantness

What I am praying for is a feeling of pleasantness and calm, a soothingness to enter the pipes and sacs. The blog party begins tomorrow evening, the ritual sacrifices will be made in honor of hard and soft core bloggers. There will be drug-induced trance states and sex with knives and forks, be careful and get ready, bring a bib and some cleaning agents, some sani-wipes, is what I suggest.

I and They (a poem for spring)

Nightly I yawn and fall deep into nightmarish slumber:
My incisors loose themselves from diseased, purplish gums
Pus accumulates in a boil on my upper lip
Despotic supermarket cashiers loom large
They punish me with bladed instruments
I am forced behind the toilet
I have only a bag of caramels and a bottle of bourbon
They have taken all of my spinach
I have been hoarding it for months
cans and cans of it
in case of emergency

I stand alone under a gazebo
Wearing only a pink cardigan
A crowd gathers behind me
They laugh at my pale sagging ass
They write bad reviews that are published in a scholarly journal
I cannot turn around due to severe whiplash
I stand before them, baring my embarrassing rear
and forming my malleable forehead into horns and antlers
with chapped and shaking hands

Blart is Here, Get your Blart

Ned's

Ned's!!! is making a comeback for April Fool's Day. We are re-furbishing the Grand Saloon area to make way for larger fry vats at each table, family size pumps of noxzema instead of individual packets, and more hallucinogenic toads (not Frogs, take it easy, Frogs).

Ned's will be more viable for mutant shapes to navigate.

Ned's will have more critters on hand for deep frying, more dipping sauces, better emulsions.

Ned's will be more inclusive, with onramps and ladders, also back entrances for the disaffected.

WE PROMISE TO ACCEPT YOU AT NED'S, PLEASE COME TO NED'S.

Skinny Puppy will play on opening night, April Fool's Day, a reunion concert with the remaining members.

There are no images at this time.

Baby Bee Sting

Good morning, how are you this morning. Please leave your answer in the comments section, I would really like to know. And are you concerned about allergic reactions to bee stings as pictured above.

Collage

There were things I had to say about cuts and ripping, fragmenting and reassembling but my warring factions have made the written word improper. I am forbidden to say anything by the Intergalactic Internal Assembly, I am ok with this for now. As soon as an acceptable affidavit has been summoned I will resume with typing profanities and senseless notions. For now I am gasping in the dark, a french fry in purgatory.

Test

This is a test of the Collage System to see if my blog has been cut up into little pieces, never to be commented on again. The comments were not working so I am performing a Hanna Hoch test to see if things get back in motion. Test test.

GOO

I was hoping to post some pictures of goo but for some reason I am unable to. You will just have to use your mind's eye to depict the many ideas of goo that might exist. Start with mac n cheese. Move on to Jello. Then think pudding, tapioca-style. Then there are the end of the world scenarios that involve evil goo that is made of self-replicating nano-bots. The grey goo goes out of control and takes over everything, gladhands itself into every crevice, halting life and normal movements. Then there is the paint goo, the substance of excitement, subject to pseudo-control by the indoctrinated willing hands of painters. The goo is the mess of reality staining itself onto flat grounds. The goo says hi in many forms and is so insolent at times, but innocent, always, you must remember, its failings are your failings, if you are seeking to use it. Useful goo. There is also the goo of insides that I will not mention, for I am feeling too fragile physically. Ok maybe I will mention some: your brain is probably gooey, your organs, if you are lucky, are pulsing and sticky. To me these goos are metaphorically and causally related. The pudding is the wonder of my neurochemistry, I am sure. My paints are like self-replicating goo-bots: sometimes purposeful, sometimes haywire.

I am signing off, sort of. Must attend to the details of life that have gone unattended to. I cannot be more specific.

Bubbles of Nothing

The portrait of the inside is the portrait of underwater bubbles. There are simultaneous occurences, a type of excitement, a turbulence that swells for a minute and then explodes, disappearing. It is a soothing action but it cannot stay. Bubbles of nothing occur in the head and gut. They are not a sickness.

Assistant to MM

I have hired this man to help me with my errands and tasks. I will let you know how it goes, does he not seem trustworthy? His name is Gluey. He carries a plastic fish with him everwhere. I can't yet see how this helps but Gluey seems to think it does.

Later...Bud and his Xerox Machine.

Morning to you.

Frogs

Frogs is my new friend, he is the deep fried taco of visionary seeing into beer goggles and oneness. Frogs will tell you when and how to get crippled, he will welcome you into the cow stomach of tomorrow so you can extrude your next painting like a hot dog, and drizzle it like dressing on the salad of your wanting waiting canvas. Today I am nothing but a gelatinous blob of drastic human compost. The weekend offered much in the way of art-seeing, however I chose not to accept any art into my life. Instead I accepted liver ache, drunken squalor and Depends undergarments. I am pilloried and dying, edging closer to an epic death, an epic lament. It's epic for no other reason than I've labeled it so. It may not be epic to you. However, Frogs remains. Frogs will stay until he wants to leave.

Worm Delight

In response to the armory, I am hastening to mention that I believe I have worms. I do have paintings which may or may not be hanging in the armory, I believe they will be, and still, looky here, I have worms. Not the tapey kind either, the true itching, knotting, gurgling mess o' worms. I know. I am lucky to have work in the armory. Yet still, the worms come! I have asked them not to and they come anyway. Listen, what am I supposed to say about the failure of artist-in-the-studio to merge playfully in unison into artist-in-the-world. I am not good at it. The transition is gravelly, like a dirt driveway, like knuckles scratching upon the rocks. I apologize for this deadbeat attitude. Mudslinging is coming, on the way to the wormhouse. Worms! Get hence!!!

Edvard Munch

"Why am I not as others are? Why was there a curse on my cradle? Why did I come into the world without any choice?"

These were the questions Munch asked. Listen, I cannot answer. This wondering is gruesome but leads to raw urgent paintings with red-haired tangle bunches, organ-flora, artist-as-savior scenarios, and life cycle symbology that attempts to put everything in visual context. Yes we are miserable, yes our livers are shriveling, yes there are times when blackness reigns, when operations must be performed and communion with others is impossible.

However, one may paint these pictures which speak of a cut away from reality - a cut between the head and the rest, the water from sky. A cut away is the representation of desire for the thing ungotten. Desire becomes slash, gesture represents menace, dread, and lust, simultaneously.

Nevermind

There is an attempt to banish bitterness, fear, and crooked miles. There is a desire to hide, but an eagerness to exit the cave and make ritual dances in a circle of stones, like a Druid possibly - if I knew anything about Druids aside from their stones, I would be more specific. Possibly Druids did not make dances, possibly they moved slowly in animal hides, forming long processionals with their glowing red Jawa eyes piercing from under the hooded hides. My eye sockets are turning bruised like the purply brown north seas. My lips are thick with unwanted meat implants. It's true that my lips are now made of beef. There is no purpose to anything, except the impulse to move forward with scratches, lines, and truisms in order to avoid hell, which for Atheists, looks much like the hell of Christians, for some reason. It's a hell of fires and blood. Even though Atheists don't believe in hell, there still is a hell.

Idea

Perhaps if I get one of these I will learn how to sleep again.

Bud: The Inferno

Bud. I don't know what to say. The minute he begins to talk, I am lost on a meandering odyssey, wishing I could stay listening to him instead of coaching the others through milquetoast drawing experiments. Bud is taking a class on Dante's Inferno, looking at illustrations of it and thinking of doing some himself. Yesterday, his drawing was more placid than usual - a few trees, a fennel flower, other assorted flora, but wait, under the ground was a whole other strata where a dwarfish bearded man sat, covered in a multitude of droopy breasts. He looked up and apologized for including a figure in his assignment (they were supposed to draw a landscape). I said "You fail!!" and he looked like he believed me for a second. Sad Bud. He asked me to look at some of his paintings and I got an interesting mini-lecture on the relationship of Dante's Inferno to Modernist writers, specfically TS Eliot and Ezra Pound. He said that all real artists had to be horrible or tortured somehow. Except for William Carlos Williams...oh yeah but he had lots of affairs, Bud said. He told me one of his paintings was supposed to be about cocktail parties...and then went on to say that he spent most of his childhood trying to figure out what to do with himself during cocktail hour, his family members are alchoholics. I think they must be very rich, eccentric, and problematic. He mentioned something about having been locked in a basement for a long period of time when he was little, and then was taken away to live with his aunt who had a teepee in the backyard. He would sit in the teepee and she would bring him vegetarian meals to soothe him. His mother is far away now and he never sees her. Bud needs love.