Just got a promotional email for an art show with this line about one of its sponsors:

“Southern California Consortium of Art Schools (SoCCAS)”

Pronounced: Suck Ass

So all of the talk about China this and China that, well, they still censor art over there.

Link to Article about Goonsquad Censorship

And they do it at the end of a gun, not a boycott or ignoring it or some other theoretical exchange.

They walk in and you take it down or u die.

So Chris Hoff blogged about the Brewery Artwalk in pictures…

LINKAGE

The artwalk was a little slow to start off and was bustling by mid-Sunday. Cool temperatures kept the freaks away, or maybe they were all just shivering over Global Warming at Earth Day festivities.

Came across this one in the Coagula archives recently…

John Waters had spoken at the Chateau Marmont, I guess it was a “performance” and I recall it being very good. We are holding up an Issue of Coagula #19 with Peter Norton and Jospeh Kosuth on the cover, among others…

Slipping into the pic was artist Max Estenger, a friend since High School. He moved to New York in 1988 and we still keep in touch. He was in the Minimalism show I curated in March.

Chateau Marmont Mat Gleason, Max Estenger, John Waters, ?,?, December 1995 at the Chateau Marmont. Photo by Gary Leonard

So everything was fine today. We went to iHop and had a good breakfast – it was supercrowded with the people coming from Easter services, but we hopped onto a counter seat after a short wait. But then tragedy struck – the Cinnaswirl French toast has been discontinued. It is as if France stopped serving frog legs.

“They were only here for a month, we shange it ebbry month” the waitress informs us. If she had been at the regional marketing meeting last week, I doubt a more detailed explication would have provided us any deeper information (and the regular french toast was quite awesome anyway).

So then things are alright, I am here working on a few writing projects (one of which is the new issue of the magazine). Then I go out and get us gardenburgers and that was lunch and things are still great. And then a neighbor had a poker game and I drank a Tab and ate pork rinds from the bag and I got a massive headache (but on the bright side, I won $22).

So maybe the throbbing will stop, but just as well, as I woul not want a stomach ache although I probably deserve one…

You see, I am all about the tacky food in the restaurant, but not the processed food in the bag or can (shelf stuff). That might have been the first time in a long ass while (years) that I ate anything even resembling a “chip” … And yeah, it is probaly psychosomatic - if iHop was serivng it I would be chowing down, at least for a month!

Brewery Artwalk is scheduled for the weekend of April 22 and 23.

One week from this weekend!

Brewery Artwalk Website

There are a lot of artists, many of whom are good and all of whom are my neighbors, so I cannot trash them, even the swill that pretends to have a serious theoretical approach on view at Rayd Projectz.

I’m immeresed in a variety of deadlines, but since you clicked on this, there is a short movie on a website linked below…

It is about the Brewery Art Colony, where I live.

AND I am in this short movie! (wearing an Angels jersey)

There is even a scene of me in my bedroom

(ooohhh)

Really:

CLICKY This Link to the Movie

ENJOY!

Also notice how the scenes featuring Michael Salerno feature the same zen harpsichord music that Kung Fu played when Caine visited Master Grasshopper.

Went to my mom’s 75th birthday party.

She is doing great.

I’m one of seven kids and we were all there, so it was picture time. We have a series of pictures of all of us, and the times that we get together are fewer and fewer over the years. I think this is the first time since one sister’s wedding in the Summer of 2003. Well, you think we’d have it down to a science or something, but each time it is chaos, to the point where outspoken dread is the norm among us. There are people screaming for cameras, ordering us to sit, stand, switch places based on the color of our shirts. etcetera. It is the norm for us, but to an outside observer - sheer pandemonium. Funny.

Sorry no picture, either, just the reportage of a survivor…

Try This at Home:

Make three artworks in your signature style using materials you intend to be working with for the foreseeable future. If everything you make is on canvas, use three canvasses, if you vary surfaces a lot between paper, panel, etc., make three of each.

Make each surface 12 inches by 12 inches. 1 square foot.

Make three artworks. Detail the cost of the surface, the cost of every material used (if you use 1/4 of a $10 tube of paint, that is $2.50 added to the materials cost). Keep track of the time spent working on the making of the artwork.

When you are finished with the artwork, subtract the time spent analyzing the artwork and/or fussing needlessly over things. Be frickin’ honest here. If you completely messed up the artwork, start the time clock back at the beginning, but keep in any materials cost that do end up adding to the finished piece.

Add up your materials cost. Add up your labor hours and multiply by the federal minimum wage (or state wage if your state demands a higher minimum). Add these two together.

Average out the costs over the three artworks. Try to determine the differences in your artwork and processes if one or more of the artworks is radically different in price - this is especially important if the artwork is indistinguishable from the others in terms of superficial characteristics associated with appearance.

When you have arrived at the cost, know then that this is what a square foot of your artwork costs to produce. This is your basement. You can never go below this cost in pricing what YOU get for an artwork. If you make a 24 x 24 artwork, the price should be quadruple this base price. And so on.

This is not a gallery price, this is your cut from the sale price.

If you are using cheap shit materials, your work MUST be priced as the cheap shit it is.

Until you have sold a thousand dollars of art retail, you must work for the minimum wage, if only to assure that your art is competitively priced. Add 25 cents an hour to your labor cost for every thousand dollars that you reap from the sales of your artworks. At $10,000 of sales, give yourself a dollar an hour raise.