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Just got a FB message from a Keeper who hates my little pins. The title of this post says it all. It is true they do not go well with old school plaster walls typical of brownstones in Brooklyn, NY. Apparently a great deal of choice words were used in reference to my pins and possibly in reference to me. Fortunately this Keeper has been a patron for a long time, almost twenty years – OMG can you believe it A.S. – you bought that painting from me in 1993.
Anyway I will tell you all the key is to not hit the pins like they are a nail. If you do they will bend, you will hit your finger with the hammer and scream: “The little F-ers” and then you will want to hit me in the head with the hammer. Because I do not want to be hit in the head with a hammer nor do I want anyone’s experience with The Swarm to involve anger, at least with regards to its installation, I will say it again: Don’t hit them like they are a nail. If you have a small hammer it will work best. As a last resort, or a first one, you could mount them on a piece of foam board and then hang that on the wall.
I am going to make a how-to-hang your Swarm video this weekend and post it on youtube. Should be a blast. And lastly always remember The Swarm wants you to enjoy installing it so contact me, The Grand Keeper 
, if you need any help.
The Sporozoan Swarm is not a lot of little pieces going out into the world to individuals. It is one large piece of art work, with a population slated to be around 50,000 when completed, that is broken up into clusters so that it can be Kept by many different hands. All these Keepers in turn create a fabric, around the world, of strangers connected by The Swarm. Once the entire population of The Swarm has been distributed The Map will pin point all locations of The Swarm and be a testament to arts ability to cross all barriers and bring people together on common ground.
Art can change the world.
The Sporozoan Swarm has reached three countries! I am excited about its progression and look forward to seeing those dots spanning the globe.
This week I am installing pieces of The Swarm at two locales in West Seattle and as soon as they are up I will have pics to show. Also was asked by my new gallery Twilight Artist Collective to be in a group show in July and solo show in October. Also got some exciting news today about a couple blog features in the very near future. Will keep you up to date as things progress.
Change your world support a local artist in any way you see fit.
I believe art can change the world and you should too. Art forces us to look at our selves: our greatest accomplishments and all of our shortcomings. Art can ask us to look deep inside and be critical. Art can ask us to challenge our belief structures and the belief structures of those around us. Art can make us laugh, cry, love, hate and feel all the emotions we are able to feel. Art can leave us cold or warm and fuzzy. Art can draw us in or push us away. Art can do all these things because we engage ourselves in a dialog with an object, a piece of dance, a painting. You the viewer must partake to complete it.
Imagine a world without art. Think really hard before you allow yourself to believe you can do so. It is not an enjoyable place to be.
Take a moment today to appreciate a piece of art, really look at it and find its meaning, find the passion the artist put into it. It will stay with you.
The Minuscule Sporozoan Swarm is really small. It is a huge leap for me to make things so small. It used to be that small for me was some where in the two foot range. I couldn’t even think about making something smaller.
These are so exciting because they start out so small and can grow to a huge scale by adding other pieces of The Swarm to them. These are not individual pieces, rather they are bits of a larger entity that keeps growing and has yet to see its end. When you become a Keeper you join a larger whole, all participating in an ongoing and monumental art en devour.
Art can change the world.
The Swarm has flown the coop. As of yesterday The Swarm is no longer contained within the USA as one piece of it made its way to Argentina.
Lets see if we can be in another country for the next display of the map.
I love drawing with charcoal, pastels and pencil. The dusty quality of the two former mediums provide a perfect landscape for the finish of the pencil. They enhance and reject one another all at the same time.
Drawing is the beginning of everything for me. It allows me to work out, very quickly, ideas that would be far harder to realize in print or paint formats. It is also my medium of choice for drawing from models. And considering that models and the human form is where 90 percent of my ideas come from, me and the paper and drawing utensil standing before the twisted body of a nude is a match made in the Utopian place in my head.
Draw, draw, draw…
One of my Flickr friends asked me to talk about this shower enclosure so here I go. These were great clients who had a side bathroom with a fiberglass enclosure in it. The bathroom was hardly ever used and they wanted something funky to happen in the enclosure. They had a bunch of miscellaneous tiles in their garage and asked me to break them and create a piece of art. I was excited and just flew by the seat of my pants.
This was a fun project that took about three days to complete. They loved it and I am very pleased with the way it turned out.
Art should be all around us. Why live a life without beauty in it?
My first studio in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn was tiny, about 150 sq feet, but I made good use of it and miss it. I was in it for about a year and a half and I made a lot of work in that space. Sometimes the best work comes from the least likely spaces.