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I currently have work in two shows. The first show is called, I think, “MFA Urban Invitational” in the Gallery at Herron College of Art and Design in Indianapolis. The show coincides with Mid-America College Art Association Biennial Conference and is designed to show how graduate level work in studio art can benefit and transform and individual’s work. Basically everyone in the show has two pieces-one from the beginning of the graduate career and one from later on that is presumably much different. It’s basically a before-and-after kind of thing. My ‘before’ is three panel piece I did called “600 Block Pearl Street” and the ‘after’ is “14206-3120 (III)” which was exhibited at the “Paper Love” show at Devening Projects and Editions over the summer.

The second show is “New Directions ‘08″ at the Barrett Art Center in Poughkeepsie, NY which was juried by Asher Miller who’s a curator of 19th century, Modern and Contemporary art at the Met. The piece selected is “14206-3130 (I)” which I showed at the SAIC’s Graduate Exhibition this past spring. Unfortunately due to geographical constraints I’m not goin to see either show.

Finally, later today I’ll finish moving out of the giant loft I lived in for the last year to better insulated and closer to the CTA Blue Line three bedroom apartment. Moving is a pain, but standing on the corner at 2:30 am in February waiting for a bus to take me to a house that I can only afford to heat to 55 degrees is worse. I’ll post photos of everything if and when I get around to them.

So said Jaime Henderson while executing her bar napkin portrait of me. It’s a new school year and that means a new crop of grad students to draw me. Plus I can get some from folks who didn’t draw me last year. I also cut my hair which means the signifiers have changed making it that much harder to capture my likeness in this most unforgiving of mediums. That being the case, I’m allowing people who drew me during round one to have another go at it. So, keeping with tradition, let’s start things off with Nudelman:

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My band, Fuck Shit City, made a record. This is it. Double A side, recorded over two evenings at Phantom Manor Recording and mastered at Chicago Mastering Service it features the soon to be hit singles “Fuck Shit Moon” and “Spirits”. Quantities are limited and this is sure to be a collectors item so get yours today!

Rode my bike up there the other day. Found it to be a lot better than the locations in Wicker Park and the Loop. Maybe it has something to do with the lower concentration of hipsters up there? Anyway, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular like I was when I visited the Wicker Park store. Maybe that’s why I walked out with so much? Hell, I even put a few things back.

• Cedar Walton: The Electric Boogaloo -Luckily this has nothing to do with bad movies about breakdancing from the 80s.
• Herbie Nichols: The Third World - From Blue Note’s mid 70’s re-issue series.
• Spirit: The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus
• Lynyrd Skynyrd: Street Survivors - With the original cover of the band standing in front of some burning buildings that was pulled from stores after the plane crash.
• Emerson, Lake and Palmer: Pictures at an Exhibition
• Jethro Tull: Benefit
• The Doobie Brothers: What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits - Purchased solely because of the title in the hopes it would live up to it. It doesn’t.
• Sir Victor Uwaifo: Guitar-Boy Superstar 1970-76 - Another great comp from Soundway.

Icee concession at the Erie County Fair 2008

Pictures I took of this year’s Erie County Fair. I hadn’t been since I was a kid. It hasn’t changed much from what I remember. This is the first time I ever went to the midway at night, which is much different than being there in the middle of the afternoon. I intentionally tried to keep fair-goers out of a lot of these, so it didn’t seem this deserted despite the fact my dad kept commenting on how there were less people than the year before.

This photo is the one flickr ‘chose’ as the lead image when it scrambled the order when I uploaded them. It’s as good as any I suppose. The rest of the set on flickr.

While visiting friends in Pittsburgh over the weekend, I went the The Andy Warhol Museum for the first time. In addition to a lot of the expected “hits” (Campbell’s soup can paintings, celebrity portraiture, cow wallpaper, etc) that I expected to see, was a curious display on the museum’s second floor.

Both the gallery guide and the signage at the entrance declared the second floor to be “Closed For Installation”, yet the contents of the that gallery were clearly visible beyond roped off area:

There were a few pieces on display, but the room was mostly filled with crates which preumably contained more work. Additional signage said something to the effect that the crates in that room were soon to be shipped to various museums around the world for Warhol related shows, or had recently arrived back at the museum.

Was this the Warhol Foundation touting it’s importance as the repository for one of the 20th century’s most important visual artists? Institutional process laid bare for public consumption? A clever negotiation of the tropes of exhibition design? Probably it was all of that.

But what I liked most was that all of the crates were emblazoned with a stencil based on Warhol’s Self-Portrait in Fright Wig:

It reminds me of the way bands stencil their logo on their gear so they can tell what’s theirs backstage.

Saw this hanging in Perry’s Deli on Franklin Street the other day.

As I mentioned previously, a friend and I are working on a project that involves collecting a number of specific records. He’d already compiled most of the required album covers by the time I got involved. There are approximately 20-25 left to obtain and, after an unsuccessful attempt at trying to locate them in some local record stores, I opted to get them from eBay.

Shopping for records on eBay is a bit of a mixed blessing. Yes, you can find just about anything you’re looking for, but the major drawback is that you don’t know exactly what you’re getting. I’ve been burned a couple of times by inaccurate descriptions and gradings. Now I don’t buy records from sellers who don’t use  Goldmine’s rating system and don’t primarily sell records.

Even with those caveats in place, I still managed to get  a couple of the records which failed to live up to my expectations based on the seller’s description. Here’s the breakdown:

• various artists: Woodstock (music from the original soundtrack and more) - I probably haven’t heard this since high school and was surprised how good most of it sounded, especially the CSN(Y) cuts. And the stage announcements are pretty hilarious .
• The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced? - Another album I haven’t listened to in years. Again I was surprised on how much better it is than I remembered. The cover has some ballpoint pen detailing that was added by a previous owner. At first I was a little pissed (especially since the description made no mention of it), but I think it will add some extra personality to the final project.
• Pink Floyd: Meddle - This, along with Wish You Were Here, is one of the biggest gaps in my collection for Floyd albums. Not anymore.
• Donovan: Hurdy Gurdy Man - Probably the most blatantly mis-graded record of the lot as there are extremely audible skips during the title track which is especially disappointing since it’s the best cut on the record.
• Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin II - While there’s nothing wrong with this per se, it’s just a shitty later pressing that’s slightly thicker than a flexidisc. The cover is in fine shape, which is, I suppose, what matters most for this project. I’ll still probably keep an eye out for a better sounding copy just because.

This is a screenshot from the bug tracking database at work and represents the first time I’ve been asked to “please do the needful” by one of the Indian developers. Luckily I’d been earlier made aware of this curious phrase by some other co-workers and knew what was expected of me. For those that have no idea what I’m talking about, check the Wikipedia entry.

My upstairs neighbors moved out and left their apartment wide open which allows access to the roof. This is the view of downtown.