#seapunkfauxfinish #newaesthetic #computationalityepisteme #imawarethesetagsgonowhere

What I can tell you is Orris Butter, the essential oil derived from the Orris Root, was the signature scent of the 19th century dandy. It smells a bit like violet and vetiver, it smells good. 

I am interested in a random output from the life-sized pool of all the things that have ever influenced an individual, even the subconscious stuff and the seemingly meaningless stuff, and this random selection lending new meaning. Were it possible that it be truly random, it would be free of some societal conditioning or at least the privileging of some things over others. Someone recently referred to this as semiotic slipping. So anyhow, yeah I'm interested in this vast pool of stuff which relates to the self, the things that define us; we usually choose to express the ones that are socially accepted, like those that directly relate to our gender or culture. I'm interested in taking everything that you've experienced, putting it all together, mixing it up so it doesn't privilege any societal gender or culture norms and pulling stuff out in the order it falls in: a beard, lipstick, juice, afros, frogs, Krishna...and then saying OK, I'm gonna put these things on and let these things define me right now. What would that look like? (By most standards, it'd look like a crazy person, a 'fractured identity'.) What could it tell me about myself? What could it add to the self-expression conversation I've been having since I was old enough to consciously alter my appearance?             

Here are some low quality photos of quick sketches I've done recently. I'm trying to quit smoking again, waiting for the obsession to be lifted...any day now. Below that is a video still from a photo project I'm working on with Mistina Hanscom. That's me in the photo, the still is courtesy of Bob Menefee, who has been video recording our antics. I'll get into more about the project soon. It's called 'Drag Me to Heaven,' and that is indeed myself in the photo. Below that is a video of the lenticular version the floral GIF from my last post. This video is from the Love Haven show at Trolley Square that I was lucky to be a part of.  

A friend has a couple cats and a boyfriend she really loves. Boyfriend lives in another state, and is hard to shop for, so she has a grand idea: "Hey! I'll have some paintings made of the cats for ______, it'll be the greatest, least expected holiday gift!" She comes to me to paint her cats, then I have a grand idea: "Hey! Let's put your hand photographing the cats in there so it's a double portrait, two for one! Plus, Iphones are the new cats, right?" 

Questions, comments, complaints? Philosophical musings on the relationship between the representation of cats and digital technology? Feel free to leave them below. 

Just saw the new documentary about Divine: life changing. Not only was she talented and audacious, but she had a good heart. Truly humbling, god bless her.  Check it out here: http://www.divinemovie.com/

Also, I had my first solo art show recently. It's up until December 4th at Lipgloss Crisis, 756 Chapel Street New Haven, CT. More about that another time. Made some very cool new prints for the show, will post photos and videos and have them in the shop soon.

 Editioned lenticular prints by me make great holiday gifts, plus you're supporting an artist so it's like that catalogue Heifer where you buy people the gift of an animal that's in turn given to someone in need, but in this case, while you still get to end (my) hunger, you actually get to keep the animal. By animal, I mean my art. If you were planning on buying something from Heifer though, I don't want to dissuade you. It's a good deal. I'll survive; I have an extra kidney.  

For Glenn the Divine:

So, as you can see, it was pretty dark in there. It was in a bar, the show was full of drunk people and there were glasses being smashed all over the place-but I'll get to that later. 

I mounted the lenticular prints on these oscillating fans, for passive enjoyment pleasure. I cut out the blades and filled the insides of the fans with moss and wax fruit. The fans are a nod to one of my heros David Hammons and dually inspired by Kenya Robinson, a great artist I feel very lucky to call friend. What I like about the fans is that they are alive (with electricity) so they are like a proxy for myself, animating a story. The flowers, moss and wax fruit nod to the fact that this is not alive but actually more of a still life. 

A note about the subject
I don't know if you know Fleur, my model. She's a bodybuilder, among many other things (dragon slayer, artist, bartender). She's the sort of woman who leaves one job at 2am and says "So tired...I'm going to the gym." The word 'sleep' is in her vocabulary, but it doesn't extend any further into her life. Making a static portrait of this woman would be like describing the purpose of a car strictly in terms of its scent. She's a machine. 

Here's another piece I had in the show. We'll call it Booby Trap, or the experiment in getting other people to break shit for me as a cathartic measure to assuage my own personal frustration. Maybe that's TMI. We'll call it Booby Trap. 

Boob clown/abrasax/cosmic maternity lenticular print here was mounted onto this medicine cabinet that was left open just a peak so you can see all the lovely treasures inside. All of the treasures (some you might recognize as my artwork)hold some sort of medicinal value to me, mostly in the spiritual sense. If you're so curious, we can talk about it just between us. I will say that you can't meditate with hemorrhoids. Notice the lovely handmade Italian shot glasses on the bottom shelf, dipped in genuine 24k gold, they were filled with tiny seashell and sea urchin spines.

Looking at the medicine cabinet, you got just a peak of the inside, being nosy you open it up and OH SHIT! one of those fine shot glasses falls out, sending a spray of shattered Italian glass, 24k gold and seashells everywhere. Good job Dude, not only did you touch the art, but you broke it. Just kidding that was meant to happen.

The little glasses were fixed, so that each time it was opened one would fall out. Responses varied. Sometimes it would cause everyone nearby to quiet and take off in different directions away from the piece; sometimes the culprit would freeze in place and look around until reassured by the neighboring bartender that it was supposed to do that; and one kind soul came up to me and said 'ohmigosh I'm so sorry I just broke your art.' 

So there ya go, not only am I very kind, but I'm also an asshole.

THANK YOU to everyone who came, and everyone who sent their condolences that they couldn't be there. Thank you for reading and checking out the pieces, please leave a comment below with questions or responses. ALSO, all of these pieces are for sale. They'll be in the shop I'm still working on, and you can message me for a price in the meanwhile.


You can email me at PetraSzillions(at)gmail.com 

These are the other two GIFs I will be presenting at the I Have a Dreamcast one night group show on Wednesday July 10th at Matchless bar in Greenpoint Brooklyn from 7pm to midnight. Come down and look. I will be there and I'd really love to see you.

I'll be displaying these GIFss as lenticular prints. I just received them from the print shop and they're pretty nice. I'll post a video of one, but you'll have to come to the show to see the rest! 

Questions, comments and criticisms below: they all enrich my world view

 

Please excuse the recent lack of commentary. This and the prior two posts are part of the ongoing process for a project I'm working on to display at a one night group show in Brooklyn (July 10th at Matchless bar in Greenpoint). I am hesitant to write about the project, because I don't want to jinx it. I'm working with a new medium and the results will be beyond my control to a certain degree, so I'm a bit nervous. 

I will say that the project involves  Fleur, video games and animation and perhaps sheep and/or fish. 

Pray for me and enjoy this GIF. I recommend enjoying it with music playing in the background, it seems to jive with most tempos.  Try this: 

Questions? Comments? Confusion? All are welcomed and appreciated. Comment below or email me at petraszillions@gmail.com
 

^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.)