My newest assemblage - "Make Something Real"

Make something real.

Those words came to me when I was considering what kinds of images I wanted to create to promote The Unforeseeable Future on social media. More than just an epiphany for that particular project, "make something real" has become this year's theme for me.

I have become disenchanted with the latest advances in technology. It seems like the notions of digital/virtual/artificial/augmented when it comes to images, intelligence, and reality itself have overtaken everything else. So far I'm not impressed with the metaverse, or NFTs, or A.I. "art." I need to get away from screens sometimes. I need to work with my hands. So what if it's messy.

Like its predecessors in this style, Make Something Real is the result of years of accumulation. An aluminum palette that probably dates back to 2019, paint skins, and paint that dried in various tubes and bottles when I was away from my studio in 2020 and 2021 all make up the entirety of this colorful assemblage. The support is a framed cradled wood board from the Artist and Craftsman Supply on Wabash that we lost in 2020.

I thought I hadn't made much art this year and was less productive than I was last year, and then I removed the blank wood boards that were laying on top of this piece and realized that it was almost done. I only had to add a few more pieces of dried paint.

In keeping with the title, I decided to use vintage ceramic titling letters to spell out "make something real" in some of my photos.

I think I may have come up with the title of my next book. We'll see.

Because of that, I've decided not to sell it yet. In the future it may be the star of a solo show.

Broken Bird

 

I joined before he did. 

Whenever I reflect on historical events that have happened since 2009, I find that my memories of where I was when I heard about them are tied not to physical locations (where were you when you heard about...) but to where I found out about them. That place is virtual. That place is inevitably Twitter. 

It was never perfect. It was deeply flawed, but Elon Musk's takeover has made it worse. Incidents of hate speech have increased sharply under his leadership. Consider this post I found in which the n-word appears over 50 times. 

 When I reported it, this was the official response:

It's disgusting to think that his new safety team has no problem with this. Disgusting but not surprising since the management thinks that finding a post like that offensive is a symptom of something he calls "the woke mind virus." I appreciate this commentary from a Black South African woman who called it like she saw it.

 

When he first took over the site, I said that I went to school with a bunch of Elon Musks, but that's not true. Those guys may have been racist and they may have been insufferable know-it-alls, but, unlike him, they actually knew something because they were actual geniuses.

 

He's just a rich man's son who got lucky. I suppose he sees himself as a merry prankster, a trickster archetype. I see him as an immature, insecure dork who deals in a literal, pedantic, sophomoric, bigoted edgelord humor that I despise. And he's not even tech-savvy enough to crop a screenshot.

As he continues to run Twitter into the ground like a suicidal airline pilot, the chaos he's manufactured has led to the rapid inversion of the meaning of a blue check mark next to a profile .

I am frustrated and disgusted that the imperfect site I had come to rely on for useful information has been rendered unstable and unsustainable by an over-privileged internet troll.

Related Articles:

 

Elon Musk broke what made Twitter great. It’s going to cost him — and us 

How Elon Musk Turned the Blue Check Mark Into a Scarlet Letter:
A weekend-long master class in business failure

Twitter Backed A Bunch Of Underrepresented VCs. Under Elon Musk, It’s Trying To Dump Them.

A Grand Unified Theory of Why Elon Musk Is So Unfunny

Elon Musk: My dog is running Twitter now
The world: We've noticed.

Elon Musk just shut down automation for important public safety accounts

Elon Musk says verified Twitter accounts are now prioritized, whatever that means

Elon Musk’s Free-Speech Charade Is Over

Twitter’s API-charging plan is the latest innovatively bad idea from Elon Musk. (slate.com)

Elon Musk says he wants Twitter to support democracy. So why is he acting like a tyrant?

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I have to admit that in all my years of exhibiting my work in art shows, my least favorite part of the experience has always been returning my unsold pieces to my studio. In addition to the sense of disappointment and defeat, there's the grueling process of getting my art from car trunk to sixth floor studio. Typically that process has involved tracking down a dolly of some kind, then making sure I stack my artwork gently so it doesn't get damaged, but not so loosely that it all slides off in route to my studio. Fortunately, I just found a solution that makes the process much easier: a folding commercial laundry cart!

Measuring 35.7" deep, 24.1" wide and 34.6" high, it's very easy to push. The wheels can turn in every direction, unlike the ones on the dollies I've had to use. And it can fold down to just 7 inches wide when not in use! I think I may have been inspired by the college students that I see moving in and out of their downtown dorms because they often use a cardboard version of this to transport their belongings. 

Now that I've brought all my art safely back to my studio, I just need to get it out of my laundry cart and into some virtual shopping carts.