Strained Piss

This two-part drawing is called Strained Piss and I made it for issue 5 of Corpus Corpus, Paul Nudd's periodic collaborative gross-out zine publication. This issue of Corpus Corpus will be released at the opening of Little Man Pee Pool Party: The Whiz Paddler's Lament, a gallery show curated by Nudd featuring statues from a variety of Chicago artists, all fully functioning fountains inspired by Brussels' Manneken Pis landmark artwork.

The opening is on Friday, the 11th, 6-10pm, at Antena gallery in Pilsen, 1765 S Laflin St. Here's a Facebook event page. You should come, it's a sight.

Here are the original drawn pages for Strained Piss. I'm unsatisfied with the second page. I wish I had eased, lengthened and softened the shape of the implied bowl with thinner piss streams and more outlying splashes. I like my first page, and I bet the compiled book will be a real delight.

Brain Frame 8

Brain Frame 8 is tonight. 9pm this time, that's a first, also, a keg. I am not performing. I was planning on reading the rest of Recent Days at this show, but then I realized that it would be almost impossible to finish a 150-ish page book in two months at the same time as organizing another Brain Frame, and planning a performance. The stress leading up to Brain Frame 7 was almost unbearable and incredibly unhealthy. So, the reading and release of Recent Days will now occur in January, at Brain Frame 10.

I've reevaluated a few big goals in recent months. Ever since my third year at SAIC, I've been planning to apply for a Fulbright to Iceland. I've wanted to visit Iceland since I wrote a report on it in sixth grade. I would like to make a film there, and I think, if I really gave it my all, I'd be a good contestant for the Fulbright award. My plan was to apply this fall, and then next fall, perhaps from Iceland, apply for grad school.

Of course, when I made that plan, I had no idea that in the fall of 2012 I would be running a compelling, successful comix performance series, or that I would be getting paid to teach filmmakers I respect how to optically print their footage, or that I would be receiving more and more requests for design work, or that my social and creative community would be so alive with passionate ideas and productive energy. So, I'm not applying for the Fulbright. Not right now, at least. And there's a good chance I will apply for grad school soon, but I don't need to think about that just yet; right now, I'm committed to Brain Frame, to finishing my next book, to producing more films. That's more than enough.

It was my birthday last month. Thorne Brandt made this gif for me. Tyson and I traveled to California for ten days. I shot five rolls of S8, which you can see soon, if you care to. Mark invited us to the Academy to a private screening of a new 35mm print (with stereo sound OMG) of Water and Power. Pat and Beverly O'Neill were there, with George Lockwood, and Kate McCabe. I was giddy to meet Pat, seeing as he's one of my favorite filmmakers. He and Beverly know me from Facebook, and, incredibly, they were excited to meet me too. We all hung out on the roof and everybody sang happy birthday, and then we went back downstairs and watched House Fuck and The Mystic in the small screening room. It was the best birthday I've ever had.

Last night was the opening of Afterimage, a show featuring and influenced by the Chicago Imagists, at the DePaul Art Museum, open until November 18th. This sculpture is an exquise corpse cobbled together by Trubble Club, including myself. I painted one of the faces: the guy with five rows of teeth. There's a wall of books curated by Trubble Club, as well. It's a wonderful exhibit and you should go.

These are photos of me on a boat, filming a wedding with my Super 8 camera. The film footage in the above video is what I was shooting. The video was edited by the glowing bride. If anyone wants me to film their wedding on a boat let me know.

---

REMAINING POINTS OF INTEREST FOR WHICH I DO NOT HAVE INTRODUCTORY PHOTO/VIDEO DOCUMENTATION:

1) One of my two jobs is as a project archivist at Kartemquin Films. Kartemquin is the social documentary production house that brought you Hoop Dreams and The Interrupters, among many other incredible films. The archivist team (or A-Team) has started a blog, and you can read my first entry here.

2) Hey, people in Hawick, Scotland, are you going to the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival? Cause you should. I wish I could go. And, if you show up at the Tower Mill on Kirkstile at 1:45pm on Saturday, October 27th, you will witness the world premier of my film The Mystic. It's a digital projection, for which I apologize, but it's also the world premier.

3) Hey, what's up Victoria, British Columbia! Are you going to the Antimatter Film Festival? You should. I wish I could go. And, if you happen to catch the last screening of the event, at 9:00pm on Saturday, October 20th, you will witness the Canadian premier of my film House Fuck. On film! Somebody buy me a ticket from Chicago to Canada to Scotland and back to Chicago. Oh, wait, somebody buy me a passport first.

Dick Pipe

I made Justin a dick pipe for his birthday this year.

I used liquid latex (to which I am no stranger), liquid acrylic paint in some simple colors, and, of course:

Andrew and I picked out the pipe at a head shop in Los Angeles, giggling a lot. Walking into a smoking utensil dispensary with the express purpose of finding the most phallic one is really fun. Those places are full of potential.

I started by coating the entire pipe in a thin layer of latex, leaving plenty of room around the bowl, the carburetor, and the tip of the stem. I was going to build the shape of the pipe with carefully sculpted pieces of toilet paper coated in latex, and they needed a base layer to stick on. I also wanted to get rid of the texture of circles pressed in to the glass.

 

For these early coats, I used a makeup sponge to apply the latex. Later, when I needed greater control over the texture and smoothness of the layers, I used my fingers.

You can see here that liquid latex has a natural sickly yellow tint to it. This cork contraption was made by Andrew so the dick pipe would have a place to dry without mussing up its coats.

The first layers of toilet paper were the most important, for creating the overall shape of the penis. I wanted the eventual piece to have a slight bow in it, and maybe the hint of a natural curve; I was going for a 'near-erect' look, not a 'rock hard' one, so I had to give it some built in flaccidity. I started by sculpting the head, and then spent a lot of time building up the testicles with bunched up toilet paper - going for realness, again, one ball is bigger than the other.

This process lasted through the duration of my visit to LA. Between each layer, the pipe had to dry. I didn't start adding color until I had the shape almost complete.

These photos don't really do justice to the work. While latex has a tacky, fleshy give to it, the use of the toilet paper between layers added enormously to the feel of the object; the ballsack, especially, has a pronounced squishy quality. My last additions were a couple veins and rippling skin flaps, especially on the bottom of the shaft where the testicles pull together and up, and where the glans meets the stem.

I started the painting process by coloring the veins, balls, and head darker blue and purple than the rest of the organ, giving these areas a nice pink blush as well. I then painted over the entirety with latex tinted with flesh colored paint. In its early stages, the veins were way too intense and the whole thing looked too purple to be healthy.

But it was certainly coming along. I did a little more painting, and layered clear latex over the top to give the skin a transparent quality and lock in the paint. Finally, I textured the last layer of latex around the balls to give them more grip and the implication of wrinkled skin and possibly hair. I finished this piece in the car in the airport parking lot, about to fly back to Chicago.

 

 

 

Birthday Cake

 

 

Back in April (around the 26th, to be exact) Andrew had a birthday and I made him a birthday cake at his parent's house in Grand Rapids. Andrew likes dinosaurs.

It was supposed to be a surprise but then the time spent making the dinos became too long of a period to exile Andrew from the kitchen. They're built around tin foil armatures, covered in butter frosting mixed with food dye. Andrew's cousin Donny helped decide on the right prehistoric skin/scale tones.

The blood is made from that colored gel stuff you can buy at the cake-decorating section in any big grocery store. The nails and eyes and stripes are black gel stuff, applied with a toothpick. In some pictures you can really see the dynamic, violent action and exquisite pain in the face of the green dinosaur. You really feel the cake.

I got the candles at that fancy-ass pastry counter at Whole Foods. And the cut up strawberries are supposed to be exotic plants.

It is a chocolate beet cake with cream cheese frosting, and gluten-free for my crippled celiac self.

House Panels

I built a house in my freshman year, fall semester, that was six feet tall and collapsible, made up mostly of found materials; I built four 3' x 4' wooden frames and two 3' x 3' ones, stretched mesh across them, and stitched found fabric, found paper, and in the case of the the roof panels, discarded CTA cards over all the surfaces.


After the semester ended, I didn't really know what to do with the house. Each panel was connected by hinges but even in its flat aspect it took up a lot of room. So I dismantled it and discarded every piece but my two favorite walls, and the ornament I had hung inside.



I've kept those two favorite panels since then, and now they hang in the entrance to my apartment.

Home Sweet Home

This hangs on the wall in the entrance to my apartment. I made it in my first semester of freshman year, out of a photograph I found on the street in San Francisco and a sock that was abandoned in the dorm laundry room.


We were assigned to create something sculptural out of found materials, and relating to home or house. So I put this together, stretching it over an abandoned cardboard container I found on the street in Boystown, and was then inspired to construct my final project, a collapsible, portable, six foot tall house also made (mostly) out of found materials. I hung this inside.