Blog

Gyeonggi International Ceramix Biennale 2011

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:51:00 GMT

Participating in the Gyeonggi International Ceramix Biennale was a delight from the moment I stepped onto Korea. For 10 days I and thirty-nine other artists from around the globe had the pleasure of working in clay alongside each other at the Biennale’s Icheon site.

I made some wonderful new friends and networking connections, gained professional insights and deepened artistic awareness. I was overall inspired by the passion and diversity of the arts being expressed around me and Korea’s invested support in cultivating creativity.

Along with exploring Icheon I got to spend some time gallery hopping in the art district area of Insadong, Seoul. I even learned a bit more of the language though I relied heavily on the generous help of bilingual speakers and kind strangers. I am looking forward to visiting again. Here are some pictures and highlights from the trip (also on Flickr).

Artists Work Studios Social Sceinc Misc

Art in Play

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 02:43:00 GMT

Consider the last time you played, not a sports game or anything on a electronic device/console, just simple playing with no stakes, extremes or rewards beyond the activity itself.

When I was younger it was easy for me to amuse myself with a box of Legos for hours on end with no aim except to ambitiously create for creation’s sake. I made up stories and worlds around the senseless contraptions I constructed that transformed them into heroes, villains, architectural bastions, deadly weapons or sleek technological marvels – simple blocks. I used to look at the age labels on the side of my toy boxes with fear, dreading the day when I would be mandated to let go. No mandate was necessary, at an early age I started drawing and discovered I could toy with seemingly limitless creativity with just a pencil in my hand, liberated to create with unbound rules and parts/pieces and inspirations. How freeing?

Fast-forward twenty years or so and I find myself sitting in my art studio, many times more capable than the boy of my youth and yet feeling like I have forgotten how to play with my creativity as my younger self did, feeling like I must regularly relearn and affirm what came so naturally before. Potential reasons why are obvious enough and can by summed up in the myriad of responsibilities that come with adulthood. All of which, still, make play in art now so crucial because it is one of the few doorways through which I could genuinely be playful apart from the constraints of everything else; it is the one place where I’m fully both an explorer and a director, where I could create for the moment, for the love and challenge of it, not for a tomorrow.

How would you play today if you were to let go of tomorrow? Considering this may at first conjure up thoughts of wild and reckless indulgences as if play reaches its zenith in complete escapism. But playing, particularly in art, is not escaping, it’s seeing, marveling in and engaging the beautiful possibilities in any approached dimension of reality whether it’s a block of stone, lines of code, a sheet of paper, a song, or a Lego set.

I recently got to visit my niece. She’s a little over 2 years old and at the time was enthralled by the purchase of a soap bubble gun. Once we got the thing working she was shooting away streams bubbles. I followed her eyes as they along with her tiny body darted from bubble to bubble, studying her captivated amazement. That’s what art seems to do, give me a window into someone else’s world of play, especially valued when I’m finding it hard to get there myself.

Excalibur Sculpture Show 2010

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 21:12:00 GMT

Pictures from the first annual Excalibur Sculpture Foundry Sculpture Show 2010. I was glad to see so many came out and really enjoyed themselves. A lot of work went into gutting and prepping the gallery space for the exhibition. I'm looking forward to next year's show.

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Affordable Art Fair 2010

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 21:04:00 GMT

Some of my pictures from the NYC 2010 Affordable Art Fair. It was nice meeting so many of the exhibiting artists at their booths along with chatting with gallery reps.

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International Contemporary Furniture Fair 2010

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 21:42:00 GMT

Pics from 2010's International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF). I was pretty impressed.

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Long Island City Open Studios pics...

Thu, 27 May 2010 13:09:00 GMT

Thanks to everyone who came out. It was great getting to share my work and talk with so many people about what I do. See pics from the show below...

My mom

Some friends chatting

My sister

Me and my niece

My mom again ;)...