Morning in Providence

This morning I wake up on Wikenden Street at an AirB&B hosted by two Brown University students. The first listing on the phoneMap for 'breakfast' is Louis Family Restaurant, and then I remember riding up the hill to Louis one morning on the back of Paul Andrade's BMW bike 27 years ago. Tragically, Paul died in a motorcycle accident a couple of weeks ago. I found out last night at my 25th college reunion dinner. Paul had planned to attend.

Sitting at the counter remembering Paul over a #2 with coffee, the Arts channel plays on the monitor overhead and there is a large Shepard Fairey OBEY sticker on the napkin holder. Things can change over the course of time, memory is far from perfect, and I have no recollection of the creative imprint that embellishes this place in the present day.

My pal Paul positively impacted the direction of my life on a whim. Seeing me at the RISD Beach on his way to sign up for a year at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he suggested I join him. Although Paul stayed in Providence, I took that year at SAIC and discovered a world that resonated with the center of my creative being. I studied with avant-garde filmmakers Tom Palazolo, Heather McAdams, Peter Kubelka and Robert Rayher. Sharon Couzin chaired the film department and her husband Dennis Couzin taught me optical printing. Laura Kipnis, John Manning and James Bond were also my teachers there.

Returning to RISD to complete my degree, I lived with Paul and another sculpture student on Federal Hill during our final year. This morning, cool autumn air, I meditate on the proverbial temporality of life. Wandering down the hill, over the river and into downtown, memories surface, dislodged by the power of physical place. 

I remember frequent rides on a 3-speed Schwinn with an 8” adjustable in my back pocket…  picnics in the cemetery, bread and cheese, red wine… my introduction to Andrei Tarkovsky at The Cable Car Cinema's Italian film series with Nostalgia… infinite spells in the studios…  the 2-hour technical lecture by Dennis Hlynsky, in-depth on the inner-workings of the analog video signal… drawing the landscape and historical landmarks in conte crayon, with pen & ink… perambulation through the train tunnel while filming in super-8 for a Winter-session project… the plastic, flower-filled ceiling of my neighbor’s living room on Pratt Street, in a house that no longer exists…

40th AAFF

The parade was made up of artists working across media, including these moving image formats: S8mm, 16mm, VHS, SVHS, and miniDV. The Asian Martial Arts lion dance troupe joined the parade. Here is the project I made to celebrate 4 decades of artist-made cinema at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2002. Jason asked me to marry him during the Festival that year, and we did on the next Autumnal Equinox at Art Farm in Nebraska.

My Current Reading List

Teo, Stephen

King Hu's A Touch of Zen

Hong Kong University Press 2007

Brem, Marion Luna

Women Make the Best Salesmen

Random House 2004

Jou, Tsung Hwa

The Dao of Taijiquan, Way to Rejuvination

T'ai Chi Foundation, Scottsdale AZ 1981

Weinzweig, Ari

A Lapsed Anarchists Approach to Being a Better Leader

Zingerman's Press, Ann Arbor 2012

McCarthy, Ondaatje, Zakaras, Brooks

Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Debate About the Benefits of the Arts

Rand Corporation, 2004

mulberry season

One Night Eight Years Ago in Knoxville TN...

Fastest Chopsticks (2005)

We were in town to participate in an a/v showdown for the "Unreal Tournament" at the University of Tennessee Knoxville / Downtown Gallery. We were grabbing a sushi special bite before our match against the indomitable Ed Cooper / Projexorcism and splendid Faze Exile on audio.

just for fun

An animated gif I made as an in-class demo for Video Art II, inspired by Terry Gilliam's Do It Yourself Animation Show.

Kiln and Convection Technology

Eighteen years ago during the spring of 1995 on a small island in the Mississippi River off the shores of St. Paul MN at an abandoned power plant a group of artists observed Beltane using the medium of fire.

Without knowing that Beltane translates as "fire of the god"(1), or 

that cakes played an important role in Beltane, or that one piece of cake would traditionally be marked and he who received it would be sacrificed to the fire...

         I cooked giant pancakes with a marble hidden inside.

Earlier in the day, I had dug a pit and assembled a stove with a sheet of salvaged stainless steel and some bricks.

Earlier in my life, I had unknowingly come to understand convection principles through observing my mom opening and closing the damper to control the heat of the kiln. When my giant pancake stove needed more heat, I intuitively pulled out a brick to create a heat transfer current that would stoke the fire thus raising the temperature of the cooking surface.

I used a snow shovel to flip the pancakes.

(1) Cormac derives the word Beltaine from the name of a god Bel, or Bil, and the Old Irish word tene, “fire.”