"Geode" Street Art Project

Street art is a ubiquitous part of most urban landscapes. However, when I usually think of the term "street art" graffiti always comes to the forefront of my mind. Living in Philadelphia has exposed me to other various forms of street art, like "yarn bombing". I like the idea of transforming our urban landscapes with street art, which was why I was so excited to come across the "Geode" Street art project by Paige Smith, who operates under the pseudonym "A Common Name". The "Geode" project alters urban landscapes by creating paper shapes that "represent geodes, crystal, quartz, or any mineral formation" that are normally found in nature:

These are installed in empty spaces, like unused public telephone boxes and holes of missing bricks on buildings. Smith uses paper, which makes their presence ephemeral. She writes, "So far I've made twenty—several have been trashed or taken away, and one has fallen apart due to rain". Smith invites people living locally to treasure hunt for her installations and features a map on her website. Do take a visit.

11.26.11 Part III

i wish to be reincarnated as a lap dog

close to the bosom of a young celebrity

oh to cuddle in those breasts

and why censor who you are

or the personal from work

isn't it all personal

but i want to connect

i want to make contact

i want to correlate the thoughts that we all must have

collection conclusion concurrent>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>generant

key strokes

organized tappings

word searching

technologies available to archive the vast amount of information of public domain

once entered into another consciousness it becomes public

it is no longer yours

once you have articulated it to another

and so is the place of all food commerce and art

all that can be consumed

is here

readily available

Published Surface Goods

i remember this poet i met once in the cafeteria break room of a whole foods
i looked at his poetry
i just remembered his name again
i looked again; just now

and

it's the same as it ever was
a tinge of misogyny
a struggle to understand the female
surface goods
published

and a novella

if mediocrity is the trend
let's break the curve

too cool to talk to me then
and too cool now

is this sounding too bitter? well ok
whatever nevermind

11.26.11 Part II

people ask me what i want to do with an english degree

and i tell them i do not know

as i spend most of my life doing

letting itself sort itself out

letting it lead me

b/c it is the true master

control being limited and false

follow the stray red string on noriko's* jacket

the umbilical (dis)chord

enzyme splayed particle

language spreading as a signifier to interpret the material world

echoes of the sorrow of colonialism and the repercussions we all feel from our shared history

and there is no change

people live in the dark whilst sleeping

people are limited and narrow b/c they [b/c they need to be] want to be(?)

i am not sure

nit sure

sit tight

aim for the glass

the tumbler of rock and progression

sifted to melt

i am in this position

of nothing

i am in this position

to say to the void that is this screen

the void of perfect silence in the hum of the far reaches of the machine

material machine mind

mechanisms

to interrelate to the happenings of the animals

*see: "noriko's dinner table"

Anne Devries

Anne Devries produces sculptures and installations that explore meaning and truth of current realities. In her piece "Based on Memory" she created coins that she had drawn from memory and  she writes that it "is a visualization of a currency that centers on memory...Ever since the detachment from gold, one could say that currencies are based on the memory of the value of gold, and as such can be seen as a virtual construction of material value":

In another compelling piece Devries deploys excerpts from Bertrand Russell's "ABC of Relativity" over a 3D video of flat cloudscapes that are seemingly interconnected to each other:

FORECAST from Anne de Vries on Vimeo.


Devries is constantly exploring the meaning and concept of reality in her work, a theme which we all can relate to in our material world and the world we explore digitally. Take a look at her website for more interesting data.

11.26.11 Part I

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy?INTCMP=SRCH

including this in the list of topics

of demands that in america the real truth of capitalism remains

greed alt corruption alt material alt language alt surface

                                                   tension                                         the tsunami at the beginning of 2011

/forage

/camp sites on public sidewalks pepper sprayed

/egypt /libya /and that region under the eye of the world and local regimes

/communication devices

/CHINA alt gov alt emerging middle class alt thanksgiving

i read the news today

                 /oh boy

                 /imagine all the people

                

recordings of music made on small plastic or larger plastic discs

/vinyl /polycarbonate

recordings made on other plastic items

/degradable /ephemeral

alt stone tablets alt architecture alt art alt political systems alt waste

unrest

civil disobedience

civic duty

dreams of materialism have rotted your subconscious

are we capable of more

than creation of technologies that allow us to inherent the permanence that is not so

what is it

that we are searching for

in the divergence of language and power and aim and substance

the i is something that i am not sure of myself but there is in an objective sense a body

and the abilities of that body to perform

material is what allows us to implement ourselves on other implementations of ourselves

what is not natural

what is not known

what is us

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Redacted Sonnets to Orpheus: Part 8

                     praising may Lament
                 weeping
         over our precipitation,
        be clear             rock


that bears                     altars.--
               still shoulders
the feeling
                       in the spirit.

Jubilance knows
     Lament is learning
            night on night


                                   even so
                                 voice
              unclouded by     breath.

i am now 30 in the solar judeo christian calendar

what is love
baby don't hurt me
but really
i know you for 10 years
i love you
more than i love people that didn't show
for over a quarter century
yeah that's right
the 30
the dirty
dirty
and of course i am drunk
yeah i did some of that jim beam
im not stepping back
it was good to see you john kennedy
i did some of that weed
and i was 5 dollars
yeah i was
here in america
i am 30 right not
this instant
in the way we keep time
smokey bear says only you can prevent forect fires
and if i could only live alone with you
with our friends
in a close warm space...

getting fired 1.16.13

when the phone doesnt ring
and there is nothing to do but accumulate time x money
at 3pm
the boss's office
strewn about dog toys
the ____ business ain't so hot
poetic licence please
so make like it's the 50's, look tootz we aint got not money ta be paying ya
so ugh, yeah, we have to let you go
last one to get hired
first one to get fired

nothing personal

one manager quivers


quietly you remove items from atop a
[MDF: UF or PF surface (but most likely the one with the formaldehyde because it's less costly to produce)]
picture, knicknack, can opener
and say one short goodbye
and go

to live in the blue electric light

Baptiste Debombourg

I have been interested in Baptiste Debombourg for quite some time, without even knowing who he was. The first images I was attracted to are in his series "INCEPTION" (2010):

Debombourg's restructured particle board furniture invokes a quality of our culture that is often prefabricated and meant to look like more expensive material. A thematic element of breaking known items apart and piecing them together again runs throughout his work.


His most recent piece is entitled, "AÉRIAL" 2012:

It is as if the pressure of the outside world has caused the windows to fail and come through; the glass looks like frozen water in motion. About this work from his site, "The mind is everything. The material is the servant of spiritual".  Take a visit.

Light Fiction: Nancy

Tuesday

415 pm:

nancy browsed Zappo’s sale section

apathetically looking at boots named: Passion, Throne, Claudia, Lets Walk, Bullet, Peak

she particularly enjoyed Nines West's line of oh so desperate black boots: Too Late, Cashy, Platnium, Had It All...

was the owner desperate or the boot she wondered aloud

a co worker snapped her neck

what was that?

no ugh nothing says nancy

and it was back to the boots

more women’s names than others: Alison, Angie, Janessa, Daisy, Fatimah, Joan of Arctic™, Tiffany...

there was no nancy in the sale section, size 8, black boots

525 pm:

subway train ride home

no headphones

no book

trying not to catch a stranger’s eye, leaning hat head rested on Poly(methyl methacrylate), the same waterbottle

chasing a rat or was the rat chasing it? up and down the aisles up and down

a boy came through the doors, large home made sugar cookies in a cardboard box,

cookies a dollar

no money, sorry says nancy

tinny bass sounds, at least 3 different languages, whispers, shouts, stop at city hall, interchange of passengers bringing new conversations, wistful young couples, young professionals in overcoats and boots and tweed

nancy wonders what woman’s name is attached to another young woman’s boots with

a jaunty step off onto the platform of her destination

white

white descended;

buildings jutting

from a concrete garden

4pm is almost dark

white shrugs off the sun

like a bad habit

the city stands alone; dirty

i want to be the white

for your arms and face

for your warm     mute  body

michael

he traced the airplane line

with his finger

the expulsion from the jet

cutting through

the cloudless sky and he would

lie on his back for hours to do this

in the cool grass

On a trip he was inside a plane

he was going across the ocean

closing his eyes 

he recalled what he would

do in the cool grass 

When the plane skimmed at

the surface of the briney deep

img src: friendlydrag0n

the chasm 2013

cave exploration

into the thing

it makes us go

we are diving into the murky deep

and can only hear breath and

rock is speaking

dripping

forming

top to bottom

deep in there

drips and echoes and rock

plunging deeper into the thing

it is both       frightening &

                …informative

but ah

the heart of this matter

was the absence

of: the aforementioned

    wicked green grin

curled

confessing no love

or heart

is this the chasm?

is there a bottom?

it falls from your sole

and we hear no sound

but forming deposits 

silent river

on the surface

control can contort 

a face into a smile or an unimpressed blank

the silent river is raging

beneath

gorging over its’ edges

taking down ancient root systems

void of fish

current too strong for anything but itself

it is moving through the body and taking anything it can with it in its’ wake

the silent river has no ocean to flow into but these pixels that form into characters and those into the words of this language

claire

the snow compressing
underneath her feet was
her favorite sound
steps were made Pausing in between each
each foot compacting
the white underneath

winter walking lent itself to a discovery
her foot would have crushed
a bird after a cat attack
displayed stark against
the blank snow

sidestepping
this she scooped
in her hand to bury it
and after she did not
so much relish the sound of the snow

in light of the fact that it's nearly my birthday

i wrote this on 1.21.09


i am backpedaling as much as i can
into rose hips
and flower tips
back from thirty
back from the dirty dirty

Cloudworks by Margriet Smulders

I was rummiging through tumblr, as I do often to mine for art and inspiration when I came across these images:

 

explosions of color and the distorted shapes of  flowers juxtaposed with water make these images very interesting for me; kind of like a balanced order out of chaos. what make them even more interesting is that though these are photographs they still posses a dreamy quality.

Visit her site if i have piqued your interest.

Redacted Sonnets to Orpheus: Part 4

tender ones,

         breath            no heed

                  touches      cheeks,

        quiver                    again.

              blessed                whole

        seem    the beginning

Bows         arrows     targets

             your smile

                    the heaviness,

                    weight of the earth;

                  heavy, heavy     oceans.

         trees             as children

           grew                         

            breezes...           spaces...

On a Wednesday night 1.2.13

he burnt out the rubber component on his MagicBullet®

b/c there was always too much fruit in his smoothies

a poker table

as seen in basements and rec rooms and man caves of the 1980's:

aluminum fold out legs; faux wood grain top

various plastic communication devices: various periods in present and past available technologies rest atop

a scrap of fabric meant to look like a table cloth featuring brown squares and sunflowers; splattered with last night's dinner

discussion of HTML 5; unified language/platform/means for visualization of data representations.

IPV 6, extended numeric combinations; location of data

recyclable items form a windowsill lining: emptied cartons of orange juice, milk, papaya juice, milk, emptied yogurt containers

black garbage sacks neatly stacked on the opposite wall in absence of a bin

we sit on aluminum fold out chairs

or chairs of red vinyl as seen in the 1970's

be
neath

a cloud of smoke

while we bear witness to the faulty design of MagicBullet®'s and rubber and the heavy use of any object toward obsolescence.

Redacted Sonnets to Orpheus: Part 2

almost   girl
          concordant joy
     her            veils
                 a bed        my ear


    slept in me                      her sleep.
                   marveled at,
         distances             felt
                         befell myself.


    slept the world            
    you                                 crave
      to be awake?
         her death         you     invent
     theme                  consumes
               sinking out                  almost...

Text: Rilke/Norton 1942

Redacted Sonnets to Orpheus: Part 1

      rose                transcendency

          singing              in the ear

        was silent           in the silence

                          change went on.

             stillness thronged

released wood

                                  and not

from fear                  within themselves,

                               cry and roar

              in their hearts.

hardly a hut

                darkest longing

                            timbers tremble

    built temples          in their hearing

text: Rilke/Norton

On John Weir

there are mysteries in life

that you will never solve

mortality and motives

this is why fiction remains

diverging from life

an art that comes from

answering questions

…

sometimes i think that capitalism killed my friend

i heard a strain in his voice

as the pressures

of the century wore on him

but i know

it was by the weight of rope and hand

…

the past is flowing behind us

as a roll of golden silk and purple velvet

we are belated

she tells me with an old wise smile

and i can feel that

…

the suicide

hated by christians

revered by samurai

taken by lovers and triads

by strangers and groups

under delusions or conclusions

beneath the duress of ones self &

                                                                                        

connection to plurality