TOP V. WEEKEND PICKS (12/19-12/31)
2 days ago
Friday, February 27, 2009
Jamie Livingston
Jamie Livingston took one polaroid every day for 18 years until he died of brain cancer... you can see the archive through Jamie's friend Hugh Crawford, laid out with the same technology used by Google maps here
Thursday, February 26, 2009
New Letter to Crist
This one has been sitting on my hard drive for over a month... Finally printed, sealed and sent out:
02-25-2009
Dear Governor Crist:
I am writing on behalf of (quite possibly) the finest artist in the great state of Florida. Neil Bender is an assistant professor of painting and drawing at the University of South Florida; this title, however, is merely a formality. Neil is better known among his peers as “the greatest painter of any generation (living or dead).” It is for this reason, Governor Crist, that you can understand my dismay when I learned that Neil Bender was not considered the “Best Painter of Tampa Bay” for the 2008 calendar year.
Once per year, Creative Loafing picks a series of “bests” throughout the Tampa Bay area. For 2008, Megan Voeller (staff writer) selected Julie Weitz as the best Tampa Bay painter. Now, Julie Weitz is a fine painter. No one is contesting this fact. Her clean gouache renderings delight the eye and stimulate the mind. But is she the best painter in the greater Tampa Bay area?
Megan Voeller took the better part of a paragraph to describe Weitz’s work:
“Nothing captured our attention this year quite like Julie Weitz’s enigmatic paintings. On pure white paper, her delicate renditions in gouache of a particularly charged symbol — the hood, in its various iconic forms — sent a little shiver up our spine while arousing admiration for her nearly flawless technique. From the KKK to Abu Ghraib, Weitz’s hoods summoned thoughts of bogeymen, as well as entities with more ambiguous associations, yet somehow managed to be vaguely comical, divorced from their real-life contexts.”
This is all well and good except that the article doesn’t so much as mention Neal Bender’s wonderful oil paintings and mixed media works. Painted without under-drawing, Bender focuses on renaissance like renditions of intertwined nebulous body parts without the bother of a perspective system. I call upon the Governor’s office to publicly censure Voeller and dismiss her from her position of area art critic. I also implore you to retroactively name Bender as Tampa Bay’s best painter for the years 2007-2012. I trust you will take swift, appropriate action, Governor Crist.
Sincerely,
Michael Reynolds
P.S. Enclosed is a small reproduction of one of Bender’s works; I believe it adequately illustrates Neil’s mastery of the tactile art of painting.
Enclosed:
02-25-2009
Dear Governor Crist:
I am writing on behalf of (quite possibly) the finest artist in the great state of Florida. Neil Bender is an assistant professor of painting and drawing at the University of South Florida; this title, however, is merely a formality. Neil is better known among his peers as “the greatest painter of any generation (living or dead).” It is for this reason, Governor Crist, that you can understand my dismay when I learned that Neil Bender was not considered the “Best Painter of Tampa Bay” for the 2008 calendar year.
Once per year, Creative Loafing picks a series of “bests” throughout the Tampa Bay area. For 2008, Megan Voeller (staff writer) selected Julie Weitz as the best Tampa Bay painter. Now, Julie Weitz is a fine painter. No one is contesting this fact. Her clean gouache renderings delight the eye and stimulate the mind. But is she the best painter in the greater Tampa Bay area?
Megan Voeller took the better part of a paragraph to describe Weitz’s work:
“Nothing captured our attention this year quite like Julie Weitz’s enigmatic paintings. On pure white paper, her delicate renditions in gouache of a particularly charged symbol — the hood, in its various iconic forms — sent a little shiver up our spine while arousing admiration for her nearly flawless technique. From the KKK to Abu Ghraib, Weitz’s hoods summoned thoughts of bogeymen, as well as entities with more ambiguous associations, yet somehow managed to be vaguely comical, divorced from their real-life contexts.”
This is all well and good except that the article doesn’t so much as mention Neal Bender’s wonderful oil paintings and mixed media works. Painted without under-drawing, Bender focuses on renaissance like renditions of intertwined nebulous body parts without the bother of a perspective system. I call upon the Governor’s office to publicly censure Voeller and dismiss her from her position of area art critic. I also implore you to retroactively name Bender as Tampa Bay’s best painter for the years 2007-2012. I trust you will take swift, appropriate action, Governor Crist.
Sincerely,
Michael Reynolds
P.S. Enclosed is a small reproduction of one of Bender’s works; I believe it adequately illustrates Neil’s mastery of the tactile art of painting.
Enclosed:
Monday, February 23, 2009
Mother Russia
Russian Brides If I could paint I would just do portraits from the photographs... Also: here
Friday, February 13, 2009
Portraits from Ashes
Lose a loved one? Get a tasteful rendering, done in their own cremated ashes...She offers discounts if she's drawing a "fallen biker." Just Wonderful.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
funny story
new stuff to be posted later... Until then, a funny story from last weekend:
Once in a while, I'll work for a photographer whose wife is a "niche porn star." They're both very nice. I usually work for the photographer but this past weekend I worked for his wife. She and I were putting together and heat-sealing DVD cases of their latest release. The work is simple, so we made small talk while filling boxes with DVDs.
The pair have a newborn, so we talked about career paths and odd jobs we used to have. She used to work as a dominatrix in a dungeon in Los Angeles. She said she didn't like the work because she didn't like to hurt people, but she did have a regular customer who paid her very well. He would come in every week and pay $600 (for two hours) to tickle her. Sometimes, he would hire her and another woman at the same time. Back then, the man was a freelance comedy writer. Today, he is one of the head writer's on the t.v. show The Office. A comedy writer paying $1200 to make two women laugh for two hours straight... :)
Once in a while, I'll work for a photographer whose wife is a "niche porn star." They're both very nice. I usually work for the photographer but this past weekend I worked for his wife. She and I were putting together and heat-sealing DVD cases of their latest release. The work is simple, so we made small talk while filling boxes with DVDs.
The pair have a newborn, so we talked about career paths and odd jobs we used to have. She used to work as a dominatrix in a dungeon in Los Angeles. She said she didn't like the work because she didn't like to hurt people, but she did have a regular customer who paid her very well. He would come in every week and pay $600 (for two hours) to tickle her. Sometimes, he would hire her and another woman at the same time. Back then, the man was a freelance comedy writer. Today, he is one of the head writer's on the t.v. show The Office. A comedy writer paying $1200 to make two women laugh for two hours straight... :)
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
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