^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.) 

These little gems are the by-product of a construction job. Nicky and I were hired to renovate the bathrooms at the boat yard. Our first order of business was to rip out the 40 year old vinyl/asbestos tiles. They didn't exactly pop out with ease, so we had to power sand the left over bits off with a power sander. The vinyl tile bits would melt onto the sander sheets and render them unusable. The melted tile, wood chips and floor grit made the most beautiful patterns on the sander sheets; they looked to me like mandalas. 

I saved them, took them home and made these. They were the by-product of one production process: a bathroom renovation. Each one was used, rendered unique and cast off. I took them home and brought them into a new production process: making art. I worked to develop the characteristics each sheet had taken on for a collaborative creation between myself and the act of renovating the bathroom.  

For a while now, it has occurred to me how wasteful the process of art making can be. I use brand new sheets of paper for sketches I throw out, and my mark making is done with toxic materials that are the by-product of some harmful process. It was nice to be able to appropriate something beautiful that would have ordinarily been thrown out in lieu of making another new purchase at the art store. I just get tired of buying shit. 

There is just so much stuff in the world; what a joy to be able to use what one already has...or doesn't need. 

Now I have to figure out how to frame these things, any ideas? petraszillions@gmail.com