Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Progress



Here are some studio shots of what I'm doing now. I have begun the second leg of preparing for my show in October. In June I laid out a plan for peaking myself for October 13ish. Things have been going along perfectly. I found that Josh Waitzkin, in "The Art of Learning" has a similar method of bringing himself up to a high level of presence, performance, creativity, and productivity to that which I have been using in my studio. I was apply principles of peaking and performance that I learned in wrestling. Waitzkin uses methods learned in world-level chess competition and applies them to martial arts. He also successfully teaches others to apply those principles to any discipline. (Apparently he is good friends with Tom Otterness as well.) Reading his book has helped me to solidify my methods and made me feel less crazy for talking about a correlation between art and wrestling practice. * Josh Waitzkin is the chess champion from the movie "Searching for Bobby Fisher." He's the "kid" (man) the movie was based on, not the actor.

Right now I'm working of drawings and doing small things here and there for the installation. This is one last push to get a few more drawings finished so I have a better selection to choose from for the show. This will probably be a 2-3 week push.

Monday, August 18, 2008

A Night at the Drive-In (sit-in, actually)







Saturday night, Nicole and I decided to have movie night on the roof. This summer we set up a little lounge area on the roof top of the first floor which is outside our windows. Astro-Turf, palms, and wood chairs and table. (see Nicole's blog) This has been a great addition to our daily happiness and fantasy of living in a loft. Just this evening we ate our dinner out there with a perfect breeze and the sound our personal live jazz band practicing upstairs.

The moon was full, popcorn was oily/salty, and the newly purchased "Darjeeling Limited" was playing.

I've been thinking lately about the act of dramatizing one's experience. I think it has a lot to do with the things I'm doing and looking into with my work. I think that it is significant that I go to lengths to set things up romantically for myself. Creating mood, tone. Interjecting romance, meaning, magic. Looking for it. I'll get into this more later.