We have one week until the engagement party and I have done nothing! Eeek. However, this year, I get one week off, so I’m hoping that’ll be enough time to get things in order. If not, no biggie. I just can’t wait to see my sisters, cousins, and BJ’s family. (We finally got another couch, after over a year without one, partly because of their visit! And it’s grey. Perfect.)
What is minimalism? La Monte Young said it’s “that which is created with a minimum of means.” Donald Judd described his own work as more than reduction. “You’re getting rid of the things that people used to think were essential to art.” Michael Fried denounced minimalism as theater, not art: it lies in wait, needing an audience. Sol LeWitt accused the elusive term of being “part of a secret language that art critics use when communicating with each other.”
The hard curves and angles of Albert Exergian‘s posters touch on these questions. For most, you don’t require much beyond the title to relish them. Young’s “minimum of means” is all the artist needs—and all you need. In one, the shape and pattern of lines point to liberty; in the other, color and composition suggest carnal knowledge.
I think Fried’s charge of theatricality illuminates what makes Exergian’s series tick. In the below images, theatricality is not a bad thing: you have to join the TV show’s audience to revel in the cleverness of these images. Belonging to that community, in on its jokes, feeling the jolts of recognition, fluent in the secret language, you share that extra source of delight. Peter Falk’s secret glass eye, Dexter’s microscope slides—they snappily unveil something essential about each show—the treachery of perception, the dark side of science. You get the picture.
Sometimes if I know things will be a little crazy at school, I’ll do a pen illustration related to our class project the night before. Then, for a few minutes each period, I’ll squeeze in some watercolor time. Trust me, it’s these small things that make a huge difference in terms of mental wellness! (But I really can’t complain much about my kids, they’re a good bunch… it’s the 6 classes in a row that’s exhausting!)
We celebrated BJ’s 26th birthday a few weekends ago with dinner at Reef. Overall, everything was delicious, but the appetizer and desert were the shining stars! For starters we shared mussels cooked in Shiner Bock, and we ended the meal with a “deconstructed” cafe sua da: Vietnamese coffee tart, condensed milk ice cream, with mint syrup. Heaven.
photos from BJ’s phone
Ralph Lauren & Nicole Farhi Spring RTW 2010 | style.com
I think denim overalls were on my Christmas wish list for two straight years in the 6th and 7th grade, along with Caboodles, and American Dolls. The resurgence of overalls on the runway kind of makes me rethink the style (they pull it off well, right?), but even with the modern twists, it probably won’t be making my list this year. BJ will be happy about that!
For the past month, we’ve been working on pages  for a zine. This time, we want to use other means of reproduction like woodcuts, but here’s a sneak peak of one of my pieces. Can you guess who?
I’m hoping we can have all 10 completed before next month, but everything has been hectic around here! This project has helped me destress, so it has already been worth it. And we’ve been brainstorming about the next Riley zine. I think it’s going to be pretty sweet.
My five musicians
BJ’s five (newly feminized)
Ed Ruscha on Los Angeles:
Being in Los Angeles has had little or no effect on my work. I could have done it anywhere.
Au contraire! David Lynch on Ed Ruscha on Los Angeles:
Ed has said California hasn’t influenced him one little bit, but I disagree. I like to think the California sun has burnt out all unnecessary elements in his work.
The incomparable Chris Ware delivers a Halloween-themed cover and comic for the New Yorker. (Cover, first page, second page.) All the Ware-isms are in evidence.
Levi’s wants you to feel that there’s something American about denim, and something deeply American about theirs in particular. (The Marlboro Man has done his part.) The company makes a poetic case in their recent Go Forth campaign, launched around July 4, with the help of Portland ad legends Wieden + Kennedy, who enlisted rising stars Ryan McGinley and Cary Fukunaga.
The “O Pioneers” spot is exuberant, full of activity. Not only does the camera whip around with Scorsese speed, dropping with the waterfall or sailing over the meadow, but the bodies twirl and careen forward, too, in explosions of motion that do call to mind some kind of pioneer restlessness. Using old Smithsonian wax cylinder recordings of (what we believe, want to believe, is) Whitman’s own voice reciting “Pioneers! O Pioneers,” the union of text and image stirs up an excitement that winningly connects the wild-hearted, hipster Generation O back to the Lincoln-era rhetoric of self-reliance and awe at nature.
The “America” spot draws its text from Whitman’s likewise titled “America.” It is night, again, and we’re out among the trees and lakes. The city doesn’t exist in this world, the daydream nation of country-boy turned metro-artiste Ryan McGinley, it seems, not in the form that we know it. The black and white photography, like the light of the fireworks, is a kind of equalizer: it finds visually common denominators. Against the hanging tension of the Final Fantasy song in the background, the vitality of the subjects—shirtless kids and suited businessmen, backflipping and flexing and chasing through waves of grain—is even more obvious. The snap of the final firecracker silences the violins, breaks the tension, and concentrates our attention on the handwritten go forth at the end. A great ad.
Okay, sometimes she’s cute. Wishing it was Saturday.
