111O Issue 1 - March 2011

Again, it is another beautiful/flat grey Minnesota morning. If you’ve had the pleasure of living here, today is one of those days where there is no indication of time’s passage and both sunrise and sunset are previously undiscovered shades of gray.

As part of my long slumber from writing, posting, and making, I’ve failed to mention one of the great projects that I was selected to participate in. I’m particularly honored to have a photograph published in the first issue of 111O. As in 111OH, the small, yet stunningly high quality journal takes one photograph, one story, and ten poems and places them together to create something wholly new and irresistible. In no way do I feel this way because one of my photographs was selected for the first issue. I am truly smitten with this project, where it currently is and am exceptionally excited to see where it is going.

Please take a moment to learn a bit more about the work and pick up a copy if you feel so inclined. I have a hunch you will be.

http://111oh.com/

While garage sale shopping this weekend I came across this wonderful gem of a book from the 1980s. Apparently someone had the brilliant idea of making Nancy Reagan a role-model for youngsters through the novel paper cut-out format. I can only imagine the conservative Republican mother buying this for her hopefully conservative daughter… never realizing it would end up in the kitsch-loving hands of a gay male, atheist, and socialist named Andrew.

Oh… how history has a sense of irony. I especially love the note that indicates the user not to cut out between Nancy and Ronald. However, I believe Ronald’s mental instability, Nancy’s running of the country via psychic advisors and ultimately the cold hand of death would do the trick of tearing those two apart better than my librarian scissors ever could.

I’ve recently returned from Montreal with a small mountain of new images and resources. Ah… inspiration is a refreshing change of pace. All people who travel devour their destinations by acquiring different material goods as evidence of the attempts to understand the  place to which they have traveled. Some people acquire shotglasses. Others postcards. I personally get to know a city through the designs that permeate through its public and private spaces. I spent most of my brief parole from MPLS grabbing, ripping, and buying printed matter. Through the above materials, I came just a bit closer to getting acquainted with Montreal… a bit of typography obsession mixed with a love and fascination with 1960s Utopian ideals… that will (hopefully) equal some decent artwork.

Leuchtturm Ink Samples ©Dowdyism on FLICKR

After 5 years of being a dedicated Moleskine user, I’ve finally been tempted by the fruit of another. The Leuchturm reporter style pad is incredibly comfortable, features a “date/datum” field and a table of contents. A perfect fit for a classic OCD type such as myself. The image above is from a FLICKR photostream devoted to notebooks of all shapes, colors, creeds and sizes. Very much worth checking out.

Book: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Author: Tom Wolfe Publication Date: 1968

Just to make the morning I’m having a bit better… my friendly librarian, Steve Liska, has sent me a link to one of his blog projects. Steve meticulously catalogs the objects/images/things he finds inside of library books. Its beautiful. Fiendish even. I can’t seem to get enough of this blog… and… it just made me squeal!

I’m just plain giddy to make the connection to the artist Sophie Calle,  who also documents human presence through observation and collection. Her series of images in which she posed as a hotel chambermaid in Venice to document the possessions of guests comes to mind. Here is a great interview with her…

I’m constantly trying to find evidence of human presence with my own work… and I think it has just made my day to take a look at this blog.

Thank you, Steve!

Two great quotes from Baudrillard’s “The Conspiracy of Art”:

In a way, it {art} is worse than nothing, because it means nothing and nonetheless exists, providing itself with all the right reasons to exist.

Montesquieu once said that “the people can become so enlightened that they are no longer indifferent to anything.” Well, it seems that the people are just enlightened enough to choose to remain indifferent to certain things and to avoid the moral danger of being concerned by anything.

I’ve been reading through Alain de Botton’s Status Anxiety. It is truly a great book that accurately describes the pressures of being an individual alive in our current historical period.  It’s true: we are infinitely wealthier than those who lived before us… but the accumulation of wealth and comfort in no way has translated into greater happiness.
Check out this video segment from Botton’s broadcast on his book.