Ding!

So I've been fairly delinquent on the blog front lately, but I have a good excuse - I've worked over 60 hours this week on the International, and when I'm done each day its usually difficult to focus on anything art related. Couple that with the fact that the Pittsburgh Penguins are tearing through the Stanley Cup playoffs, which also provides ample distraction, and its easy to understand why.

However, I had a decent group of people stop by on Friday (by which I mean an exemplary group of people, of decent size...not the people, the group) and in addition to eating some delicious BBQ-ed victuals cooked by the one and only Dani Simmons, they checked out a few of the paintings I've been working on recently, and were caught off guard by how small they are. Thats right, 5x7 actually means 5 inches by 7 inches. Its not that I don't have an aversion to working on a bigger scale, but I enjoy the intimacy of a smaller piece, and its just difficult for me to find the time to do larger pieces and not get derailed by constantly being interrupted by unimportant things, like work. Interestingly enough, after having a (short, slightly drunken, and hilarious) conversation with my guests about these pieces, what do I find when I wake up Saturday but an article in the New York Times by Roberta Smith about small paintings. Its a fairly interesting article, and I definitely found some commonality in a few of the reasons she suggests, particularly the bit about small works sharing an affinity with the printed page, among other things. However, the article also annoyed me at the same time with lots of generalizing about "art today," particularly her complaint about the "mind-boggling degree of spectacle that afflicts so much art today." I've now been working on the Carnegie International in some capacity for over four months, and for the past two months I've been involved in a very hands on way: installing the show. The International is very much a view of art today, and the spectacle that she complains about, from what I've seen, isn't so much about the art as about all the bullshit around the art, especially the various art fairs. Enough of that for now.

Anyways, no mind-boggling spectacle here, this is another small work, 5x7, that I did several days ago and am only now managing to upload on here.

I am planning to start working on some larger things soon, although they'll probably remain mostly in the planning phase until after the International opens May 2.