God is watering my lawn today while I lay on the couch drinking coffee.

salon

this saturday's salon was really cool. about 50 folks crowded into chris' house. evan showed some nice paintings and his recent project has included making a ton of feather beards which he brought as ice breakers. chris' lady friend simone played really beautifully written songs and had a lovely voice. james postponed untill next month so john anderson whom i teach with at Biola gave a lecture on spatial/philosophical transitions vis a vis painting over the last 1000 years which was super thought provoking. good stuff. james will do March and one of my favorite painters Brad Eberhardt is going to be the artist and I think Barrett's buddy Johnny who is a great singer/songwriter will play. so it should be great and i'll keep my loyal 2 readers up to date as it gets closer.
p.s. evan's band madeline flash and brad's band wounded lion, both of which are truly amazing live shows are playing in l.a. in feb so i'll post info on that and i encourage you to go see both.

I am reading my Bible a lot more and have been super stoked at what that has been doing in my life. It is amazing what happens when I can actually put down all of my shiny, distracting, bits of distraction and focus on the Lord how quick His grace re takes over my life. It has been awesome. Bird is doing super well and talking really well and exerting a new wave of creativity and adventure that makes me reel with excitement at the beauty that that creature exudes. Earl has got me out surfing a lot more lately which I appreciate. The studio feels really good right now and I have been really productive and will have updates soon. Lastly Tammy and I are just got tickets to see David Hockney's stage production of Wagner's opera version of Tristan and Isolde which we are stoked about. I especially because David Hockney is my all time favorite picture maker and he does a mean stage design. Word. Po' folks at the opera.

Salon

Our next salon is upon us. The last one was by far the best thing (call it an art piece, event, etc.) that I have ever orchestrated. It was amazing. Hopefully this month will be as good or better. Brother Evan apRoberts is going to be the artist, and art critic, writer, theater critic, James Scarborough will be the lecturer. Brother Chris is taking care of the musician and reader, so I look forward to them. I know on my end that I love Evan's art. We did our mfa show together and his band, Madeline Flash is epic. James has written for Artforum, and Flash Art among others, and taught at fucking Berkeley, and has an awesome blog, which you can link off of mine, and is a good buddy and funny as shit. I am stoked.
Come, you are all welcome.

Meaning Vacum

So in making visual things and looking and thinking about others' visual things, I have become more curious about what I concieve as a meaning vacum. That is, that when one looks at specific and explicit visual things, i.e. a Gap ad or whatever, no matter how codified it is you get the punchline quickly so it takes much less mental filtration and experience on your part. The lady in the jeans need no mental connecting of the dots, because you see the Gap logo. Done.
But when you look at a more ambiguous image there, in your visual frame is the visual info, and then depending on how ambiguous, you are left to fill in the rest of the space right? So depending on how compelling the que's, you then go through your years of mental data and begin to ascribe meanings where they are otherwise left out. Like when our gov. topples another gov. and there is a gov. vacum as people scramble for power and order, thus goes our minds when looking at ambiguous (abstract) visuals. With my own work I have always been astonished at the shit people come up with as far as what they think the meaning is because OF COURSE, every move must pragmatically mean something.
I like this idea and I am becoming more curious and aware of it as I make and look at things. Maybe you all always got that, but this dustilled version just snapped in my pea brain as of late.

Oh yeah still more

all of my paintings have been for the most part 2' x 2', oil and acrylic on canvas, with a few exceptions of 4' x 4' and 6' x 4'.