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I was ashamed to discover I only posted 3 times last month. A list of apologies for sparse posting is here. Some quick notes:
My regular grab from the NYer:

Neologisms have always appealed to me—a literary equivalent to mash-ups and remixes. Wired's jargon watch was my favorite part of the magazine when Gareth Branwyn was writing it. NYer is usually more conventional in its language, so I was surprised this morning to read Nick Paumgarten's Dirty Wikitricks, which uses words like:

  • wikicivilians
  • wikitrickery
  • astroturfing
  • wacktivists

After reading this, I had a little epiphany. For years now I've tried to figure out what is compelling [to me] about Jeff Spaulding's work. It occurred to me that, in part, it's because they are visual equivalents to neologisms.

Neologisms efficiently compress lots of ideas into a small space. At their best they are self-expanatory and open up a whole slew of new ideas, as well as the ones they are packing. I think Jeff's work operates the same way: seductive, sexy, and pregnant.


Check out Maggie Michael's show, Open End, at G Fine Arts. She continues to catalog the interactions of different types of paint and the range of application from uncontrolled to controlled. New [to me at least] is the addition of symmetrical elements, so her compositions also have a range from ordered to disordered. But even the 'structured' symmetries bear more resemblance to Rorschach tests than to architecture, so chaos seems to have the last word.

And I'm putting up this older piece because I'm very fond of it.


Frank Day's new show, Vessels, at Addison Ripley has great work in it, but it doesn't really give one an idea of the real scale of Frank's project. Rembrandt and Shakespeare are indexes of the implications of the human condition for individuals; like many others of his generation of photographers, Frank is really indexing the human footprint, the implications of the human condition for different groups of humans. [Oh, and by the way, he does it as well as, if not better than his peers.] His career would be better served if his work were presented in that context.

I generally don't nitpick, but Frank is pretty meticulous, so I can't figure out why the frames have such poor joins at the corners. I'm sure JT Kirkland would have something to say about this.


Speaking of Frank, he, along with a host of others, are in the TRANSFORMER Auction on Saturday. I got a preview of it this afternoon—some really hot stuff. My favorites:
  • Hannah Rose
  • Jason Zimmerman
  • Lynn Meyers
  • Breck Brunson
  • Nilay Lawson
  • Steve Cushner
  • Lucy Hogg
  • Judy Jashinsky [my favorite piece by her]

There are a few others, but I'm not going to mention them because I think I'm gonna bid, and I don't want the competition. And a few people that I didn't see, but I'm looking forward to:

  • Mary Early
  • Brandon Morse
  • Vesna Pavlovic

Cool stuff on Google Video:

iTunes is getting more interesting; they have the new Colleen EP, Colleen et les Boîtes à Musique. Colleen also has a mySpace page.