Reading List

I’ve been able to include a healthy amount of reading into my studio regimen lately. It’s the most amount of reading that I’ve been able to manage in quite a while and it feels really good. Pictured above are the books that I have been working on, some of which I’ve finished. “Blink”, by Malcolm Gladwell and “The Varieties of Scientific Experience,” by Carl Sagan are the ones that I have finished. Both were very good and the Sagan was amazing. “Blink" was about rapid cognition, which I have been thinking about a lot lately, especially in regard to deciding what to make, as I work from my instincts primarily. “The Fold,” by Deluze is probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever read and is turning out to be very significant to my work. I have to re-read each chapter one or two times before moving on and I am reading the philosophical essays of Leibniz to go along with it. (The Fold is Deluze’s response to Leibniz, claiming him as being the grounding for a Baroque philosophy.) I'm re-reading/ finishing "Vatican to Vegas." It is a history of special effects and a theory of the new Baroque. I never got to finish it, but am starting from the begining.

I always read many things at a time. Some books are better for reading in different circumstances. For instance, I’ll read the Gladwell books or a fiction at the laundry mat or some place where I might encounter distraction, while “The Fold” I read before working on art as I feel as if I’ve been meditating after having read it for an hour or so. I’ll read a chapter here and a chapter there, switching between the books as I feel the need for the different information that they hold.

I try to look at a lot of stuff too. These are the spaces that I have been looking at lately. Two great bargain books. I'm especially blown away by the Baroque ceilings.