Phil Ross (San Francisco) works in the realm of “biotechniques.” He makes sculptural and architectural works from plants and fungi, and videos about live cultures. As the founder and director of CRITTER – a salon centered-around DIY biology events, he has organized events like “Enormous Microscopic Evening” at the Hammer Museum (2010). His multi-decade research [...]
In his 2011 non-fiction book, Moonwalking with Einstein, author Joshua Foer befriends the professional “memory athlete” Ed Cooke who suggests to him that you can slow down subjective time by packing your life with as many memories as possible. (You’ve probably experienced this sensation when attending a symposium that compresses so much information into a [...]
On March 3-4, 2011, I attended the “Art as a Way of Knowing” conference at Exploratorium, San Francisco, the legendarily creative, hands-on science museum founded by Dr. Frank Oppenheimer in 1969. (By the by, Exploratorium has had an artist-in-residency program since 1976, beginning with Bob Miller’s mind-expanding experiments with light and shadow.) This art-science convocation [...]
Earlier this year, I simultaneously read Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gadget and Steven B. Johnson’s Everything Bad Is Good for You, and found it, as you can imagine, confounding. Lanier argues that digital technology is reductive of human intelligence and stunts innovation (because of short-sighted design which results in technological "lock-in" and subsequent "sedimentation," described as "when digital [...]
On November 11, 2010, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that some of the biggest names in technology, media and fine art are coming together to support Art.sy, a Pandora Radio-type aggregator which will recommend art to users based on their "tastes." Among the supporters and advisors to Art.sy are art collector Wendy Murdoch (wife of [...]
Sometimes the activities one assumes are just pleasant diversions from the real substance of life produce almost sacred experiences. Such is the case with the free "Bounce" workshop, led by "Big Freedia, the queen diva, dick-eater, and late night creeper," that I attended on Friday, October 1, 2010 as part of Pittsburgh’s first VIA Fest [...]
During the ten years that I was with Aurora Picture Show, I hosted at least 300 visiting artists, and gave almost that many tours of Houston. Like an old cabbie, I have fine-tuned these trips into a scripted tour that features folk art environments, underground tunnels, celebrity grave sites, art cars, urban bayous, museums, mega [...]
This past weekend I attended a screening of short films, Pirate Utopias, curated by Sean Uyehara at San Francisco International Film Festival. The program, which was described as “a systematic approach to pleasurable non-productivity,” contained some of my favorite experimental filmmakers like Martha Colburn, Nathan and David Zellner, and Bill Morrison. But I was unprepared [...]
Art & Boats is my ongoing series of interviews and stories about artists who build boats, sail, explore and challenge themselves on the water. For background on Art & Boats, read the first entry. It’s hard to believe that just 100 years ago there were still world maps with areas marked “unexplored.” I recently read [...]
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack And you may find yourself in another part of the world And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself, Well…How did I get [...]
I have a recurring dream that I discover a hidden room, floor or entire wing in my existing home. The expansive imaginary space defies Newtonian Physics, and the ornate architectural styles vary as wildly as Hearst Castle’s. Ambling through these cavernous rooms in my sleep leaves me craving for secret passageways in my waking life, [...]
One of the potential hazards of moving to a small town is that you may end up the Mayor. Such is the case with Travis Whitfield, an artist who was so enamored with the rural town of Keachi, Louisiana (pronounced Kee-chi), that he settled there, and inadvertently became the town’s appointed archivist, preservationist, historian and [...]
I’ve got nautical kitsch and art all mixed up in my head. As the daughter of a boat builder and an artist, I have a Pavlovian response to anything that combines art and boats. I grew up in a house that would have suited Captain Ahab just fine– stuffed marlins, whale bones, ships’ wheels, rope [...]
I just got word from Javier Fadul at Culture Pilot that Houston is hosting a TEDx event on June 12, 2010. TEDx is the newly launched mini-me of the TED Conference (which started in 1984 to bring together the "greatest minds" in Technology, Entertainment and Design). The “TED Talks” videos are positively addictive (see "Confessions [...]
With the Climate Change Summit wrapping-up in Copenhagen, and it not looking so pretty for the future of this blue planet, I recently made tentative “end of the world” plans with my husband (we probably have spent too much time discussing Cormac McCarthy’s The Road). My husband (being at a physical disadvantage) assumed that he [...]
What to make of The First Annual Rob Pruitt Art Awards which took place on October 29, 2009 at The Guggenheim Museum in association with White Columns and Calvin Klein Collection? Art prizes with designer names attached have been around since the 1990s, but this was the first “awards show” styled event that mimicked the [...]
Cinema Arts Festival Houston , "the only U.S. festival devoted to films by and about artists," launches November 11-15, 2009. When two New York real estate promoters, commonly known as “The Allen Brothers,” founded the city of Houston in 1836, their intention was to make the township a center of commerce and government. Houston’s bid [...]
In the September 13, 2009 edition of The New York Times, art critic Roberta Smith lamented the “academicization of the art world” (see Artists Without Mortarboards) and, went as far as to write that the growing interest among art schools in offering Ph.D.s in art “makes the blood run cold.” However, what warmed Smith’s cockles [...]
