^My first GIF. I used to see tech savvy artists when I was younger and think that it could never be me. Dreams do come true.

I've got some new projects I'm excited about, one being 8 feet of astroturf. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but the word pouch keeps coming to mind. I have finally begun trying out framing options for the junkyard mandalas. http://www.petraszilagyi.com/1/post/2013/02/junkyard-mandalas.html 
I think I'm going to go with recycled barn wood frames and some sort of recycled mat. Apparently it wastes  more resources to produce a round wooden frame, so I'm going to go with squares. I'd like to keep finding low ecological impact ways to create art. Because, politics aside, we really need to pay attention to our resources. There is nothing more inspiring than an expanse of natural landscape: forest, desert, mountain, ocean. It fills the void. 

 I'm also going to be collaborating on a shoot with the lovely and very talented Fleur De Kine, model, bodybuilder and creative stylist:
https://www.facebook.com/FleurWBFFPro?group_id=0

She will be modeling and giving us Grace Jones/tarsier/Pothos/Eros/Himeros goodness here at the Ibarn in Wallingford, CT, which I am renting from Maia and Baptiste Ibar. Good friends, kind people and exceptional artists: 
http://maiaibar.com/
http://www.baptisteibar.com/

I've sketched out some ideas for shots with Fleur. She is visually stunning (those muscles!), so I am trying to get as much as I can together before we shoot to make the best use of our time together. It's such a busy world. I will upload those sketches...  

I'm still cutting my teeth on photoshop, so I am seeking opportunities to practice. If you'd like me to make some not so subtle modifications to a picture of your face, comment below or email me.I can't take specific requests, just send me a pic and I will play around with it.  
 
Let me know before I get swamped again! 


Edit: I recently watched a great documentary called Examined Life which features philosophers given 10 minutes to talk about the real world application of philosophy. Slavoj Zizek gives a lecture from a trash dump and asks us to reconsider our relationship to the divine landscape. He argues: rather than the sort of New Age, back-to-nature approach, perhaps we should be exposing ourselves to the by-products of our industrial activities by visiting landfills and waste management facilities. If we did so, having freshly seen result of  or consumption (waste), we might be more conscious of the impact of our actions. Furthermore, while a natural landscape is beautiful, Zizek notes that by romanticizing nature, we are creating an idealized relationship to the planet that is not true love. If we want to truly love the planet, we will find poetry in the landfills too. ( I'm sure this is not further justification for western countries to continue dumping all their trash in continental Africa.) 

Plastic surgery has been a long-standing obsession of mine. Why? I dunno, probably because I was raised in Los Angeles and also because I am a flaming gay man trapped inside a woman's body (many people say this, but in my case it's actually true). It is so fascinating. I can't get enough of it; I could look at plastic surgery images all day. I've spent countless hours googling "(insert celebrity name here) plastic surgery" and hopping from pop-up laden site to site saying "No, not her!? She always seemed like such an actress of integrity." No matter. Those surreptitiously tweaked, "I only do injectables" types are the light weights, and my primary concern is with the serious, no bullshit, plastic surgeon on speed-dial, even my labia has an implant types. They are fantastic.

Here's my thing though. The very liberal, anthropology-touting, NPR-listening crowd that I would call my clan, regularly express our disapproval for the choices plastic-surgery enthusiast make. However, the same crowd is very quick to laud the tattooed man as a walking body of art, glorify the lip plates of Ethiopian women and Brazilian men, and even express a kinky nostalgia for the corset. Why is it more OK to make yourself look like a demon than it is for your breasts to be an obvious choice addition to your anatomy? 

When my obsession with plastic-surgery was newly budding, I was baffled. But that doesn't look real at all!? Shut the fuck up. It doesn't need to. It is an exaggeration of certain cultural beauty ideals. America likes a thin girl with big boobs, a full pout and nay a wrinkle nor sag to blemish her full, child-like face. All of that might seem silly on a 60 year old woman, but so might a lip plate. It might not look very natural, but neither does a lip plate. It looks kinda funny when they do everyday things like drink water, but have you ever watched a woman with a lip plate drink water!? Furthermore, plastic surgery can have risky and potentially fatal complications and you can't predict how it will age, just like Mayan head slanting, or lip-plates. So please, let these women wear their animal skins and shiniest rocks, and allow them to poke, prod, nip and tuck, so that they might continue the ancient tradition of cultural dysmorphia and so that I might continue to enjoy these shiny, brightly colored plastic-silk flowers of Beverly Hills. 

And, forgive me for indulging in stereotypes, but from everything I have heard about those who take their plastic surgery to a pseudo-spiritual level, they are usually very sweet people. I can't name names, but I don't doubt it.


Agree? Disagree? Like my picture? Let me know what you think!!!!!!!

My collegiate artistic studies were focused in video and performance art (somewhere I have a video of myself interviewing another version of myself with the word "TAMPAX" shaved into my head- I'll find it and GIF that shit). I spent a lot of time studying digital cameras and the latest post-production software. It was good, it was fun, and, most importantly, I felt cool.  
Upon graduating and losing access to a well-endowed production studio, I started painting. It was as much a gain as a loss: free of blue computer light I was able to return to a regular sleep schedule, I get to work with my hands, I get to partake in an ancient tradition that satisfies our primal need to push mud around with a hairy stick, and I have more than just data to show for a hard day's work. 

Recently, however, I've started to feel out of touch. I sit around partaking in this 32,000 year old tradition, repackaging the same issues that have beguiled us since the dawn of inception, and I'm feeling like I could be a little more contemporary. (Side note: I also live in an old barn in one of the oldest states in the country, most of my friends are over the age of 50 (I'm 25) and, most alarmingly, much of the new pop music on the radio is made by people younger than myself. Holy shit, I am getting too old to be a pop star.)

Last week, to make myself feel less antiquated, I signed myself up for some photoshop lessons with Karen Wheeler (http://www.karenart.com/ ) in New Haven to start working the ole techno-digi muscles again. This is what I've made so far, and it is certainly affecting my sleep pattern.

A couple days ago I was at Hull's Art Store in New Haven, killing time and trying to maximize the purchasing power of my tight budget.  I found myself in the children's section looking for something cheap enough to keep me amused until my therapy appointment and I found Multicultural Broad Tip Markers. Jackpot. 

There shouldn't be much of a fuss over a box of markers intended to reflect the wide spectrum of the flesh rainbow, however the word "multicultural" is loaded. It brings to mind well-meaning education programs of the late 80s that attempted to remedy racial injustice by lumping all non-white racial groups under the heading "Multicultural."  There was a "Multicultural" themed Whitney Biennial that featured the race-related work of black, brown and asian artists; this show was criticized for re-enforcing ideas of a non-white ethnic 'other.' (It's along the lines of the concern: If February is black history month, what are the other 11 months?) Similarly, there was the 1989 Magiciens de la Terre exhibit at the Centre Pompidou which aimed to represent the works of the "ignored 80% of the world," yet was accused of reenforcing racial stereotypes and a French colonial agenda that showcased her grateful colonized. 

Anyhow, I bought the markers. The colors were really hot and the name was thought provoking. I take no issue with the product, I'm glad it exists. I'm just struck that this completely innocuous pack of kids markers can seem so political and require delicacy of approach. The colors include: Bronze, Light Brown Fawn, Olive, Terra Cotta, Sepia, Tan, Beige, and Mahogany. To my surprise, each marker is distinctly different from the rest...I was expecting something akin to those 400 color marker sets in which all 10 of the different shades of purple mark the exact same color. But no, these are good. 

I drew a picture of my boyfriend using all 8 markers. It's funny, but in this picture doesn't he look like he could be black, white, latin or asian? It wasn't my intention, I guess it was the markers.