Konradprojects Blog

A big change

2009-06-07T00:04:00.001-04:00

I mentioned a few times already that I am planning on closing the studio. I simply am not able to make enough use of it with the time left over from my day job and I need to restructure the way I work. Well, that problem has been solved and now I have a real plan.

As of July 1 I will be living and working in Philadelphia. It's a big change for me having spent the entirety of my adult life in NYC either in school, working a full-time job, or more frequently doing both at the same time. But I'm looking forward to it. My wife and I have already found a place to live in the Fairmount neighborhood, and we're moving at the end of the month. I'm leaving my job behind and will start a full-time home studio.

The remainder of the month is sure to be busy with cleaning up, packing, and moving stuff. I may not update much, if at all until after I'm settled (which is pretty much the frequency that I've been posting anyway). Once I resume, I have a feeling things will get a lot more interesting...

Images from Actions for Urban Spaces

2009-05-13T10:44:00.006-04:00

Here's some long overdue images from the exhibtion I was just in. I've been really bad about updating...

Action for Urban Spaces at Art in General curated by Nina Horisaki-Christens, including work from John Hawke, Virginia Poundstone, and myself:

Installation view of my work
left: Dead End installation photos and concrete bomb
right: Two Tons of "Take That!" (on wheels) documentary sculpture and video stills

Concrete bomb retrieved from abandoned segment of Smith St, Newburgh, NY, 2006, 2009

This is a new conception of how to display Dead End in a gallery setting. It doesn't seem right to install the bombs indoors as if they've fallen from the sky. Instead, I decided to present the bomb as a sort of archaeological relic, alongside photographs documenting the original outdoor installation.

Vitrine containing wheel fragments crushed beneath two tons of concrete, 2005

Conceptually, this is similar to the concrete bomb on the pedestal. Parts of the original project (in this case the broken wheel fragments) are collected and presented in a gallery space as relics. I've begun to think of them as documentary sculptures.

Unfortunately I don't have any good pictures of John Hawke's or Virginia Poundstone's projects. There are some photos from opening night on Art in General's Flickr photostream.

2009-05-04T09:24:00.001-04:00

Just uninstalled my work from the group show at Art in General yesterday. Hopefully I'll have some images posted soon for those who couldn't make it.

Open Studios- April 18 & 19

2009-04-15T09:44:00.008-04:00

Open Studio
Sat. & Sun. April 18 & 19
Noon - 5 PM

578 Nepperhan Ave.
Yonkers, NY

My building is having an open studio event this weekend. I am only able to open my studio on Saturday, April 18 this year, but the other artists will be open both days. If you are free, please stop by to take a look and say hello.

More information about the event and the artists participating can be found at www.yohoartists.com.

How to get there:

By train: Metro North Hudson Line to Yonkers, 5-minute taxi ride to YoHo Studios, taxis are available at the station.

By car: Saw Mill River Parkway to Exit 5A-Palmer Rd. Left onto Palmer Rd., Left onto Saw Mill River Rd., Right onto Lake Ave. YoHo signs on left. Parking at the rear of the building accessible from Lake Ave, or parking lot on Nepperhan Ave.

By subway/bus: Take 1 train to 242nd St. (last stop). At 242nd St. & Broadway take Beeline Bus Service 1,2,3 (confirm with driver) to Getty Square, then transfer to #5 bus to 578 Nepperhan.

By bicycle: If you're smart enough to ride a bicycle, I'm sure you're smart enough to find a good route. Anyone who comes on bicycle will qualify for a discount on one of my drawings.

Click here to download printable directions with map and information.

Opening: Actions for Urban Spaces

2009-03-19T09:00:00.001-04:00

A quick reminder about the exhibition I'm in, which opens tomorrow night at Art in General. The opening reception is Friday, March 20, 6-8PM.

Actions for Urban Spaces
Art in General, 79 Walker St.
March 20 - May 2, 2009.

John Hawke, Michael Konrad, Virginia Poundstone
Curated by Nina Horisaki-Christens

Actions for Urban Spaces critically explores the built environment, examining the relationship between the results of institutional decision-making and the actual public use of urban spaces. While not working as activists per-se, these artists situate their works within the public realm, directly confronting their subject matter, picking apart the ways in which we mentally and physically construct, utilize, and abandon the built environment.

Upcoming Exhibition: Actions for Urban Spaces

2009-03-10T12:12:00.002-04:00

The result of a lucky studio visit I had on Friday the 13th of last month:
I'm going to be in an exhibition at Art in General, opening next Friday, March 20 and on view through May 2. The reception will be March 20, 6-8PM.

Actions for Urban Spaces

John Hawke, Michael Konrad, Virginia Poundstone

Curated by Nina Horisaki-Christens

I'm going to be showing documentary images and sculpture from 2 Tons of "Take That!" (on wheels) and Dead End. I'm happy about this, because even though 2 Tons is an older piece, the vitrine of broken wheels has never been shown. I am also currently working on a new format for presenting the concrete bombs from Dead End which will make it's first appearance at this exhibition.

Closing the studio is postponed

2009-03-10T11:10:00.004-04:00

Circumstances have changed and I'm not closing the studio as originally planned. Now it will stay open for 3 additional months, until the end of June. More details surrounding this decision will come later, but in the meantime I'm preparing for an exhibition which opens soon and an Open Studio weekend in April.

Panoramic views of Egypt

2009-02-13T15:04:00.001-05:00

This will be my final post on my recent travels to Egypt. During my short stay, I visited Cairo, Abydos, Balyana, Luxor, Thebes, Karnak, Giza, & Sakkara. I shot many panoramic images on my digital camera, which I stitched together by hand in Photoshop (with the exception of one image that Photoshop automatically stitched). In my previous posts, I already published some of these images, but I've completed a few more that have not yet been published, so here they are, all in one place.

Click on any image to see it full-size for much better detail. The files are not that big, but they are larger than typical Internet files, so please be patient while they load.

The Village of Abydos along the edge of the desert.

The front courtyard of the Dig House at Abydos.

The Dig House's "backyard," where the mudbricks are made and pottery sherds are stored.

A view of the various intersecting landscapes on the desert horizon at Abydos.

A mudbrick funerary chapel alongside a stone temple for Ramses II.
(This is the image that was auto-stitched in Photoshop.)

A view of the interior of the Shunet el-Zabib from atop the Northern wall.

Work inside the Shuneh, from right to left: excavation, worksite photo documentation, transporting buckets of excavated sand, surveying the site, and men sifting excavated sand on top of the dune.

A full view of the Eastern side of the Luxor Temple.

Wide view of the Medinat Habu on the horizon in Thebes (West Luxor).

The Pyramids of Giza, from left to right: Khufu (Great Pyramid), Khafre, Menkaure and the smaller Pyramids of Queens.

Abydos: Excavation Progress

2009-02-11T14:29:00.001-05:00

When we arrived in Abydos, the project team began a couple of excavations at the Shunet el-Zabib. Some substantial progress had been made by the time I left a week later. During my stay, I was able to get some pictures documenting one of the excavations.

Below is a close-up view of the inside of the Eastern interior wall of the Shuneh. These mudbrick walls were so thick that after the structure was abandoned, Coptic monks carved out cells in the walls to create various rooms (living quarters, kitchens, etc.). What you are looking at in the following picture is a small, partially exposed view inside one of these Coptic cells.

After a couple of days of digging, the majority of the cell is visible. The white plastered recess that the archaeologist is standing next to would be for displaying some sort of religious icon.

In the next picture, the excavation has not yet reached the floor, but most of the cell is exposed. You can see the top of a built-in bench running along the wall on the left, still mostly covered in sand.

On top of the unexcavated bench, there was a segment of some kind of potted vessel.

Here's a closer look at the recessed icon display area.

Finally, here's a shot of the completed excavation. The cell has been dug out all the way down to the floor. The bench on the left hand side is actually pretty low. There are a few other recessed cavities in the wall, and there is even a hole that goes all the way through to the other side in the lower right corner of the rear wall. I'm pretty sure that hole is the recent result of a fox burrowing in the wall.
I left shortly after this cell was completely excavated, but the work at this particular site was still far from done. The drawer has to hand draw plans and elevations of every detail and brick making up the cell and it's contents. The surveyors have to take points of the site so that it can be exactly located on the computerized map, and linked to the drawings and photographic documentation, as well as other geographic data. Finally, in order to preserve the structural integrity of the wall, the excavated cell needs to be filled back in. This process consists of covering the exposed cell with a thin layer of sterile sand and then rebuilding the wall using modern mudbricks made to imitate the original structure. The sand protects the cell from being cemented to the new mudbrick. Once the new mudbrick clears the height of the cell, the rebuilt wall is bonded directly to the original wall. In the meantime, the excavators move onto the next section of the wall to start the process all over again.

The Dig House at Abydos

2009-02-09T15:56:00.001-05:00

Coincidental to my recent trip: Expedition, an archaeological journal from the University of Pennsylvania Museum has an article about the mudbrick dig house where I stayed in Abydos. The article focuses on the house and the various stages of construction and improvements it has undergone over the years. It includes some historical construction photos:
Download the PDF in order to read the full article.

Temples, Tombs, Museums & Pyramids

2009-02-07T00:02:00.004-05:00

A panoramic view of the Giza Plateau. Click image for a closer look.

I'm back in NYC. Here's how I spent my last 3 days in Egypt:

Day 1 - Luxor, East Bank
- Karnak Temple
- Luxor Museum
- Luxor Temple
- Mummification Museum

Day 2 - Luxor, West Bank
Rented a bicycle and visited:
- Colossi of Memnon
- Medinat Habu
- Valley of the Kings
- Tombs of the Nobles

Day 3 - Cairo
- Pyramids of Giza
- The Great Sphinx
- Step Pyramid of Zoser

Everything was amazing, but the Mummification Museum was a waste of time and I should have skipped the Tombs of the Nobles because I was too burned out by the time I got there. Last week, when I was at the dig site at Abydos, I imagined I would post lots of pictures of all the sites I visited, but now that I'm going through my 1000+ pictures, I'm realizing that some serious editing is called for. It's already tedious enough to look at someone else's vacation photos.

There are simply too many pictures of the temples, and they are almost entirely details. If I posted any of those pictures, I wouldn't be able to adequately explain exactly what you're looking at. Both the Karnak and Luxor temples are too large to be captured on the ground with a point and shoot camera. I didn't take any photos inside any of the tombs or museums. That just leaves the pyramids, and everybody has already seen pictures of those. So here's a very small sample of some of my more interesting photographs of the Pyramids at Giza and Saqqara:

Details of the Great Pyramid of Khufu

Pyramid of Khafre
Detail of Khafre's original glistening limestone exterior which would have once covered the entire pyramid.

Pyramid of Mankaure

The Great Sphinx with the Pyramid of Khufu in the background.

Step Pyramid of Zoser, as seen during a violent dust storm in Saqqara.

Walk like an Egyptian

2009-01-29T09:01:00.001-05:00

My work in Egypt is done, so I've left Abydos. But I'm not leaving yet. I still have 3 days to see the sights: Thursday & Friday in Luxor and Saturday in Cairo, before my return home to NYC on Sunday if I make it home alive. It really seems as if there is no law enforcement here with regards to traffic regulation. You can drive at night with no headlights, pedestrians routinely walk in the street instead of the sidewalk, EVERYONE honks their horns ALL THE TIME, and it's not completely uncommon to see a car going the wrong way down a one way street.

I shot this short little video while standing on the corner of a busy intersection in Cairo on my first day in Egypt. I was exploring the city by foot, and when I got to this highway, that was the boundary of my exploration since I was scared to cross the street. If you watch, you'll see a couple of Egyptian pedestrians walking through the heavy traffic with seemingly little regard for their safety. Now, after being here for a week and a half and having seen much worse in that time, this seems pretty tame.

I've since found much better examples of how crazy the traffic is, and I'll post a couple of those videos here, but I realize that none of these videos do any justice to the experience of actually trying to cross these streets in real life.

While in Luxor & Cairo, I have a lot on my agenda: the temples and museums of East Luxor, the tombs of West Luxor, and the Pyramids of Giza in Cairo. I will no longer have Internet access, so updates on the final part of my trip will be postponed until either Monday or Tuesday next week after I return home.

Abydos: Intersecting Landscapes

2009-01-28T09:31:00.000-05:00

One of the first things that struck me about the Abydos landscape is how surreal it is. It's basically an intersection of various landscapes: ancient, modern, village, desert, agricultural, spiritual, and some hints of the industrial. Imagine waking up in the morning at 4:30 AM and the sound of the villagers call to prayer is projected through the desert air via megaphone. To a non-Arabic speaker, it sounds like chanting and moaning and it drones on for over an hour. Then it happens 4 more times throughout the day.

Then, when the sun comes up on a dusty morning, it doesn't look like any sun you've ever seen before. It's small, but very bright, although covered in clouds, and actually looks more like the moon. But I watched it throughout the day, I can assure you that this is the morning sun:
When we first went out to see the excavation sites, I had the chance to climb on top of one of the tall walls of the Shunet el-Zabib. From that great height, I was able to see an amazing example of the intersection of the various landscapes. First, I had a clear view of the Valley to the Underworld:

Then, while looking westward just to the right side of the valley, this panoramic view stretches across the horizon (click on the image to enlarge):

First, in the foreground you can see part of the mudbrick wall of the funerary enclosure on which I was standing when I was viewing the landscape. Panning to the right, there is lush green argicultural land, forcibly placed into the desert. There are cattle grazing and men working in the farms. The land was heavily irrigated, but it's still the desert and the land is destined to last no longer than a few years before the sand siphons out all the water and turns it into salt. Sticking out among all this are electrical towers and power lines.

Then, continuing on towards the north, one sees a large Coptic cemetary:

At the edge of the cemetary, stands an ancient mudbrick ruin, behind which is the village of Abydos, just on the edge of the desert. In this next panoramic view, you can see the village along the horizon line, just beyond the desert. Once again, click to enlarge.

Here's a closer look at some of the village apartment buildings:

While walking around the desert, one is aware of the variety just by looking at the sand. Sherds of ancient pottery are broken and scattered about everywhere. Modern relics are left behind as well, usually accumulated in certain areas in the form of plastic bottles and other small pieces of garbage. And more than occasionally, animal bones and skulls appear as a reminder of the roughness of the desert and despite its beauty and nearby oases, in some ways it is still a dangerous place.

Abydos: Funerary Chapel & Temple of King Ramses II

2009-01-27T08:57:00.000-05:00

Here's part two of my tour of the Abydos project's excavation site. I know significantly less about these monuments, so it will just be a few pictures and very brief explanations.

This is a mudbrick funerary chapel. The best explanation I can come up with is it's sort of like gravestones, but without the tombs. There were no people buried here, but rather monuments to specific dead people. None of the monuments are here -- they were all stolen -- so it's just a bunch of constructed holes in the ground.

As more and more important people started to have bigger and bigger monuments erected in their memory, eventually King Ramses II came along and trumped all their little mudbrick structures with his elaborate stone temple, right next door.

This is an engraved stone column from the temple. You might be able to see some of the gold detail still on the column, near the 2 triangular engravings, indicating that it was once painted.

Some heiroglyphics, which I believe spell out the name of King Ramses II, engraved in the stone. The animal figure in the center is a baboon. Here are some details of the heiroglyphics:

And here's a panoramic view of the entire site, with the mudbrick funerary chapel on the left and the stone temple on the right. Click to view the image in closer detail.

Wall Drawings Inside Egyptian Train

2009-01-26T14:00:00.001-05:00

Here's two drawings I saw on the interior walls of a train while I was traveling through Egypt. I can't read the signature, but right below it, it says "Cordoba '91."

Happy New Year! 新年快樂！

2009-01-26T00:01:00.022-05:00

Happy Chinese New Year!
It's the Year of the Ox (牛 níu = cow; ox in the Chinese zodiac).

Since I'm still in Egypt, I thought these Egyptian representations of oxen would be an appropriate way to recognize the new year:

In Ancient Egypt, the ox basically served 3 separate functions:
1. They were used for their strength as agricultural draught animals.
2. For food purposes, they were kept for milk and slaughtered for meat.
3. Finally, there was a spiritual side, most notably represented by the Apis Bull. I don't fully understand the mythology behind it, so I'll leave the explanation to the collective wisdom of Wikipedia.

The Apis Bull, an incarnation of the god Ptah:

The ox as draught animal in Egypt:

And so that we don't stray too far from the Lunar New Year, here's a traditional Chinese representation of the ox:

Abydos: Funerary Enclosure of Khasekhemwhy

2009-01-25T08:05:00.001-05:00

Upon arriving in Abydos, I went out for a tour of the project's various excavation sites. There was a lot to see, and everything made a lot of sense to me when it was being explained, but I'm not an Egyptologist and I wasn't taking notes, so I'm just going to post some pictures and give the simplest explanations I can recall, with no guarantee of 100% accuracy.

This is the full view of what the locals call Shunet el-Zabib. It was Pharoah Khasekhemwhy's funerary enclosure in the desert landscape, looking at the southeastern corner.

Egyptian pharoahs often had funerary enclosures erected at Abydos, separate from their tombs. There were at least 12 others nearby, but this is the only one still standing. It's over 5,000 years old and built entirely of mudbrick. That is no small feat.

This is a panoramic view of the interior of the enclosure, as seen from on top of the 11 meter high northern wall. Click on the image to see it full-size.

I don't know exactly what the purpose of these enclosures was, but being located at Abydos was very significant. Abydos is associated with the Egyptian god of creation, Osiris. Osiris was an early king of ancient Egypt, and when he died, he became a god, and his son Horus, the new king, was seen as his incarnation. Since then, all living pharoahs were considered to be Horus, until their death when they would become Osiris and have to travel west into the underworld. It just so happens that right here, in Abydos, there is a valley that goes all the way into the deep western reaches of the desert.
This is the Valley to the Underworld, in the center of the above image, as seen from the funerary enclosure.

The funerary enclosure is a tall structure with a shorter, outer wall surrounding it, both walls broken by narrow entrances which would have had their doors shut closed.

View of the passageway between the eastern inner and outer walls.

Architectural detail on exterior of inner wall.

Whitewash paint on the inner wall below the excavation line.

Restored entrance through the inner eastern wall.

Much of this building is suffering from serious structural damage due to erosion and infestation by mud wasps. Also, there was a time period when Coptic Christian monks lived in the enclosure, and they created bedrooms and kitchens by hollowing out large sections of the thick walls. As a result, some parts of the structure are in immediate danger of collapse. The project team has been conserving these walls by making identical mudbricks (but they are marked to indicate that they are not original) and filling in the structurally damaged areas.

The damage is so severe in some parts, that there are holes straight through the wall.

The cavities in this wall have already been patched. You can tell by the 2 areas of lighter brown mudbrick.

Finally, here is the missing corner of the northern and eastern walls. You can see from the new bricks on the wall to the left that it is in the process of being rebuilt. Also, notice the piles of sandbags near the center of the image. They are forming temporary supports for weakened sections of wall, until excavation and rebuilding can be completed.

That is all for the funerary enclosure of Khasekhemwhy. I will continue my posts of the Abydos excavation sites with images of a funerary chapel and a stone temple for King Ramses II.

The house at Abydos, Egypt

2009-01-24T07:54:00.012-05:00

We arrived at our house in Abydos on Thursday night after an 8 hour train ride from Cairo (2 days ago, I'm a little behind). I'm kind of glad to be out of Cairo, which is easily the most chaotic and most polluted place I have ever been in my life. The house here in Abydos is right on the edge of the desert, so it's the complete opposite of the city. Here's some pictures of the house:

This is the full view of the front of the house in the desert landscape.

This is a 180° panoramic view of the front courtyard as seen from the entrance gate. Click on the picture to get a closer look.

Once you enter the house, through the courtyard, the dining room is on the left...

...and the "internet lounge" is on the right.

This is Obama. He is a new addition to the house, recently found wandering the desert. He's still a very young kitten, but once he gets older he will earn his keep with the other cats by keeping the house rodent free.

If you continue through the house, you enter the interior courtyard. That middle door at the back of the courtyard is my room. Notice the domed roof. That does an amazing job of distributing the air so that the room feels air conditioned during the hot desert days, while still keeping it nice and warm during the cold nights (temperatures often fall into the 30s here during the winter).

This is the inside of my room. My roommate's bed is on the opposite wall. The beds are hell to sleep on and my entire body is totally aching. Otherwise, the room is comfortable enough. It's about 12' square with a 17' height at the center of the domed ceiling.

Here's the lab, where I spend my mornings and evenings working. We have free time after lunch until 4:30. The guys in the front are mapping out the morning's excavation. That's me in the back preparing the database for the day's photographs.

And this is our "backyard." I don't know what the grid structure is on the sand, but just beyond that are piles of baskets filled with pottery sherds.

These baskets are full of sherds which have been tagged and need to be examined. You have to be careful when walking around here. The very deadly horned viper likes to hang out among the baskets because that's where the rodents dwell.

Here's a pile of loose sherds which have been discarded.

This is a clay cup that I found while digging around in the pile of discarded sherds.

That's basically it for the house. Yesterday, we were given an orientation tour of the project's various excavation sites, so that will be the subject of another picture heavy post soon.

In Cairo

2009-01-21T06:05:00.007-05:00

NOTE: I had trouble posting this when I first tried, but I got it to work a day later. So the post date reflects the time I originally intended to publish it.

I arrived in Cairo late last night. We had some trouble at customs; we had a couple of 2-way radios which we weren't allowed to bring into the country, resulting in a 3 hour delay. I didn't get to my hotel room until nearly 3:30 AM.

After a short night's sleep, the plan was to rise early and head out to Giza to see the pyramids. We hired a van, which ended up being delayed by a very unfortunate hour. During that delay, I received a phone call which required me to stay at the hotel and await further instructions regarding the retrieval of our confiscated radios. The rest of the team continued with their trip, but since the baggage was all registered under my name, I got stuck with the responsibility of staying behind to help sort it all out.

So, instead of pictures of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids, I present to you the view of Cairo from my hotel:

I especially like the large satellite dishes perched atop the crumbling brick.

P.S. I will still get to see the pyramids on my final day in Egypt, when I return to Cairo.

Going to Egypt

2009-01-15T08:30:00.002-05:00

Next week, I'm going to be in Egypt. I'll be working as a technician for an archaeological dig at Abydos. My job is to set up the image database; basically, I'm just installing the software and teaching the team how to upload their daily photographs into the database. But I'm hoping to actually get to visit the dig site instead of spending all my time in front of a computer screen.

Once the work is done, I'll have 3 days as a tourist (2 days in Luxor, 1 in Cairo). On my agenda is to see the Karnak & Luxor Temples, visit the Valley of the Kings, check out a few museums, and of course, see the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids. I expect to be very busy.

There will be pictures and a full report when I return, but I'll try to write a post or two while I'm there.

UPDATE: It looks like I'll have an additional free day in Cairo when I first arrive. That's great, because I'll get a chance to explore the city at the beginning of the trip, so when I return to Cairo I won't be in as much of a rush to see everything on my hectic last day.

Everything must go!

2009-01-09T11:44:00.007-05:00

Well, maybe not everything, but I am trying to get rid of a lot of stuff. I still have some old sculptures from my school days and most of those are going in the trash. They have been adequately documented and I have no intention of ever exhibiting them, so they gotta go.

It's kind of liberating to get rid of stuff once and for all. Of course it makes room in the studio so that there is more physical space, but it also helps clear out the mind and make room for some fresh thoughts. I've been looking forward to a fresh start with a blank slate for some time now. A chance to experiment and work out some new ideas without any specific expectations.

I already mentioned two sculptures that I will not trash, but I do have to get them out of my studio. My preference is to sell them or put them on exhibit somewhere, but the condition is that I do not want them to come back to me. If I can't find some kind of sponsored solutions, I may just give them a new life with a variety of well situated installations throughout the city. Here are some of my thoughts about what to can be done with them:

Keeping the Powder Dry, 2004

This sculpture is pretty versatile. In concept, it consists of infinite miniature concrete barricades. In actuality, I only casted 72 pieces, which is more than I want to have now. I can see these existing publicly in various types of urban space: piled up into a corner, staking out ground in the middle of a plaza, or maybe the other way around. Also, they seem like they could be painted. I'm toying with the idea of donating them to other artists for a group exhibition. But I hesitate because although I like the communal aspect of the idea, it also seems way too egotistical and a bit too much like those terrible painted cow sculptures.

Dead End, 2006

I think this sculpture can also exist under a variety of circumstances. The original installation consisted of 12 concrete bomb sculptures. I only have 7 remaining. Ideally, I'd like to find an outdoor site in the city where I can install all of them together (I'm open to suggestions), but I think they will also work if installed individually.

So, that's the idea. It's a tall order to find a good home for all of these pieces before the end of March (when I close the studio), but that's my goal. Of course, these works are also available for sale, and I would consider trades with other artists. Feedback, suggestions, and inquiries are welcome.

About the Studio

2009-01-03T13:10:00.004-05:00

I'm closing my studio in about 3 months. The excuse is that by next summer, my wife will have a new job which gives us an excuse to move out of our apartment (something we've been wanting to do) and therefore I will also need a new studio closer to wherever we end up living.

But the real reason is that my studio is no longer serving its intended purpose. I opened the studio one year ago after an extended period of time without a real workspace (see my initial post on this blog). In my excitement to finally have a place to work, I spent most of my time there on my days off from my job. This worked out for most of the year and I got a lot done in the beginning, but it eventually led to burnout.

Thinking back to my previous working arrangements, the most successful period was when I had studio inside my former apartment. Back then, I thought it would be better to have a separate studio, but now I realize that as long as I have full-time job, it is easier to make time for my studio if it is right there in my house when I get home from work.

Currently, I have to wait until the weekend to work because my studio is too inaccessible after a 10 hour day at the office. This results in too much on/off between job-think and art-think, making studio time really painful. Lately, I've been skipping the studio altogether in favor of sketching, reading, and planning from home. That makes the studio a waste of time and money, and more importantly an obstacle to my creativity, so that's why I'm closing it. I'm leaving it open just long enough to finish an important project (and to get rid of a few things, which will be the subject of my next post).

Dusting off the cobwebs

2008-12-28T19:09:00.006-05:00

I hope everyone had a happy holiday. Sorry I've neglected the blog for nearly two months now, but it's not because I haven't had anything to say. In fact, I've got a lot on my mind, but until now I haven't been able to overcome the inertia to actually write about it. So, I'm just going to outline a few things to get started, and I'll try to follow up on each one of the topics in more detail in future posts.

1. I'm going to finish up a few things and close my studio in a few months. For various reasons, I haven't used it very much in the last 2 months (although I have been working from home), and I'm starting to feel guilty about the wasted the rent money.

2. I'm actively looking for locations to permanently place 2 artworks. The pieces are the small concrete barricades from Keeping the Powder Dry and the concrete bombs from Dead End. In the interest of minimizing my possessions and starting from scratch, I am trying to get rid of a lot of stuff, but I am unwilling to trash these two projects.

3. I am going to work at an archaeological dig in Egypt for two weeks in January. I'm pretty excited about this, and I will follow-up soon with more details and the nature of my job.

So that's it for now. I've also recently seen some exhibitions/watched some movies/read some books, which I might write about soon. The truth is, I'm not much of a blogger, but you can at least count on more details on the three items above soon.

Don't forget!

2008-11-04T00:01:00.000-05:00

New thoughts on NYC bike racks

2008-10-07T09:08:00.003-04:00

Last night I was down by Astor Place so I finally got to see the finalists' bike rack designs in person. I don't have any new pictures to share, but after seeing them up close, I've revised my thoughts about some of them.

First of all, I ruled out all of the entries which featured a colored powdercoat finish. Including the Lang/Dobbs yellow Y-rack which I previously chose as my favorite design. The reason is simple - these racks have only been up for a week or so and they already look like hell with the paint scratched up terribly.

I still like the Y-rack as a design on paper, but in the real world it would function much better without a painted finish, and that would compromise part of it's appeal. Some people are also saying that skateboarders will be all over that thing, but I reject that arguement. No one's going to skate on it when bikes are locked to it, and if there are no bikes, who cares if some kids are skating on it or a pedestrian uses it as a seat?

Besides being powdercoated, the Open Thread 4-bike rack is simply way too big.

The flexible cable rack by Next Phase Studios is not as bad as I thought it was (not too flexible), but it still seems like a gimmick and is likely to create unnecessary production costs.

I still really like the Ignacio Ciocchini circle rack with the vertical green stripe. Even though this rack has some green powdercoat, it's not painted on the circular part of the rack, which is the primary bicycle contact point. To me, this design simply provides all of the necessary functionality while fitting in best with existing NYC street furniture.

I've substantially improved my view of the Jeff Miller & Andrea Ruggiero diamond shaped rack. This thing is DURABLE. It looks good in person. And I like the green plastic strip which protects both the rack and your bike. This could easily be my top choice, but I still like the look of the Ciocchini rack better.

After eliminating all the powdercoating and the gimmicks, the Ian Mahaffy & Maarten De Greeve circle rack gets elevated to third place, in my opinion. Any of the other racks which I have not mentioned, my opinion has not substantially changed from my previous post.

So, these are my new top 3 picks:

1. Ciocchini - circle rack w/green stripe
2. Miller/Ruggiero - cast iron w/protective plastic
3. Mahaffy/De Greeve - circle w/horizontal crossbar