As im in the land the spawned the Paisley Underground...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yidJbNm8Uo&feature=related
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A little more than terrified. Had the nicest kind of humbling the other day during a meeting with Michael Asher; I was stuttering gah-gah-gahing.. he got straight to the most flawed bits of the work, right from the get go. Ive become a little lazy with my work, not leaving enough room for critical thought to enter the piece. I need to find a way to reconcile my deep deep but conflicted love of established/historical aesthetic tropes with the the criticism I'm trying to inject within them... ugh. Feeling like a little bit of a hack, but a resoundingly optimistic hack. I only have 2 years here, and the shortness of that time scares me just a little.
Its a totally different atmosphere than OCAD... loads of 1-on-1 time, priority is put on having meetings with mentors, advisers and as many faculty as you can afford to see. The faculty are brutally honest, and I like that, a lot. Scared, but enjoying myself and terribly looking forward to my studio keys... this week!!!
There are lizards here on the more pedestrian-free stretches of sidewalk, who like to lay in the shade of the scrub bushes and cacti along the road. They bolt when you walk by, really cute. Saw a quail the other day. Also mountain lions, black widows, wolf spiders, scorpions, tarantulas in the hills, and rattlesnakes. Its pretty damn cool.
Im working 6 hours a week in the supershop. Perfect amount of time for me, just a little bit of petty cash... cant afford much more time than that.
Watched Peewee's Big Adventure projected onto the Mausoleum at the Forever Hollywood Cemetery on Saturday night.. part of the <"http://www.cinespia.org/">Cinespia cemetery screening series. Paul Reuben was there, as were two of the other film stars (I was running around the crowd to meet some friends at the front, and missed their names). Ive been fascinated with the space since watching this doc: The Young and the Dead Exceptionally surreal experience, as most of this experience so far has been.
Looking forward to this event in December:
Tuesday, December 9, 7:30 pm
Name That Tune
with Leonard Nimoy & Josh Kun
A special night of lost music, excavated memory, and forgotten Jewish LPs. Followed by a book signing of Josh Kun and Roger Bennett's And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved and Lost (Random House).
Theres also a dead sea (Salton) not too too far away, and I think there might just be a bit of a trip in the works for sometime later this year... fishy highly alcaline inland sea caused by a breach of the Imperial Vally Dike.
Overall, this is an exceptional... exceptionally weird, varied and at times dangerous place
(as a quick illuminating annecdote: I spent Saturday night at a Toronto freind's grandmother's place. Her neighbourhood was used as the location for Mart McFlies home in Back to the Future. Super cute area.. 4 nights ago there was a fatal drive by a few doors down, you can walk down the street at night, and home invasions are a frequent and accepted quality of the area. Latino girl gangs beat the shit out of gringo girls (I sympathise with the cause of the action... but Im still at the root of it a passivist with a temper.)
Anywho... you get the picture. Its an odd place, this LA area.
Theres more, I'll write a bit later.
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A little more than terrified. Had the nicest kind of humbling the other day during a meeting with Michael Asher; I was stuttering gah-gah-gahing.. he got straight to the most flawed bits of the work, right from the get go. Ive become a little lazy with my work, not leaving enough room for critical thought to enter the piece. I need to find a way to reconcile my deep deep but conflicted love of established/historical aesthetic tropes with the the criticism I'm trying to inject within them... ugh. Feeling like a little bit of a hack, but a resoundingly optimistic hack. I only have 2 years here, and the shortness of that time scares me just a little.
Its a totally different atmosphere than OCAD... loads of 1-on-1 time, priority is put on having meetings with mentors, advisers and as many faculty as you can afford to see. The faculty are brutally honest, and I like that, a lot. Scared, but enjoying myself and terribly looking forward to my studio keys... this week!!!
There are lizards here on the more pedestrian-free stretches of sidewalk, who like to lay in the shade of the scrub bushes and cacti along the road. They bolt when you walk by, really cute. Saw a quail the other day. Also mountain lions, black widows, wolf spiders, scorpions, tarantulas in the hills, and rattlesnakes. Its pretty damn cool.
Im working 6 hours a week in the supershop. Perfect amount of time for me, just a little bit of petty cash... cant afford much more time than that.
Watched Peewee's Big Adventure projected onto the Mausoleum at the Forever Hollywood Cemetery on Saturday night.. part of the <"http://www.cinespia.org/">Cinespia cemetery screening series. Paul Reuben was there, as were two of the other film stars (I was running around the crowd to meet some friends at the front, and missed their names). Ive been fascinated with the space since watching this doc: The Young and the Dead Exceptionally surreal experience, as most of this experience so far has been.
Looking forward to this event in December:
Tuesday, December 9, 7:30 pm
Name That Tune
with Leonard Nimoy & Josh Kun
A special night of lost music, excavated memory, and forgotten Jewish LPs. Followed by a book signing of Josh Kun and Roger Bennett's And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved and Lost (Random House).
Theres also a dead sea (Salton) not too too far away, and I think there might just be a bit of a trip in the works for sometime later this year... fishy highly alcaline inland sea caused by a breach of the Imperial Vally Dike.
Overall, this is an exceptional... exceptionally weird, varied and at times dangerous place
(as a quick illuminating annecdote: I spent Saturday night at a Toronto freind's grandmother's place. Her neighbourhood was used as the location for Mart McFlies home in Back to the Future. Super cute area.. 4 nights ago there was a fatal drive by a few doors down, you can walk down the street at night, and home invasions are a frequent and accepted quality of the area. Latino girl gangs beat the shit out of gringo girls (I sympathise with the cause of the action... but Im still at the root of it a passivist with a temper.)
Anywho... you get the picture. Its an odd place, this LA area.
Theres more, I'll write a bit later.