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Jeppe Hein Water Flame (2006)
‘Water Flame is an installation combining two elements usually opposed to each other in a spectactular but nevertheless minimalist way: a small sprinkling fountain with a flame burning on the top. This paradoxical constellation of elements creates an effect of astonishment and wonder.’
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Sylvie Fleury Gold Fountain PKW (2003)
Gold porcelain, plexiglass plinth, 18 x 62 x 62 cm
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Raffaelo Romanelli Untitled (1928)
‘Outside of the Starbucks in the Plaza of Kansas City is a thoroughly inappropriate fountain called “Boy and Frog.” Why is this fountain inappropriate? If you can’t tell from the picture, it is a naked young boy with his frog. When turned on, the water sprays from the little boy’s peep into the frog’s mouth. It is a little boy peeing in a frog’s mouth! How is that appropriate for public viewing?! I first saw the fountain when my friend Anna came to visit me last year. We went to the Plaza and to look at all high-fashion things we couldn’t afford and be “ladies who lunch.” After lunch we went to get some coffee. That was when we saw it. A boy peeing into a frog’s mouth. We both stared for a while, trying to be sure of what we were seeing. Then I looked around for someone else who was shocked by the fountain, but nothing. People were buying their lattes and going on their way. Apparently public depictions of little boys peeing in the mouths of amphibians is okay in Missouri. It was originally sculpted by Raffaelo Romanelli and was acquired for the Plaza in Florence, Italy in 1928 by John C. Taylor, the chairman of the J.C. Nichols Company. I’m all for artistic expression and extremely opposed to censorship, but I’m struggling to get what the creative merit to this fountain is.’
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Klaus Weber Public Fountain LSD Hall (2003)
‘”Public Fountain LSD Hall” is a single room installation by Klaus Weber. In the centre of the installation and the proposed building is a crystal glass fountain. The water running through its innards is spiked with D-Lysergic Acid Diethyamide.’
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Yoan Capote Tear Duct (2001)
‘In Tear Duct (2001), he replaced the top of a drinking fountain with a stainless-steel mold of the face of a classmate who had to support herself through prostitution, a prevalent social problem in Cuba at the time. When viewers put a coin in the slot of the fountain, red wine spouts from her mouth. People drinking from the fountain are put physically and psychologically into the position of her customers, watching the wine and their saliva drain through her eyes.’
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Klaus Weber Sandfountain (2012)
‘As we move into what has been called the anthropocene age, in which we prove we can do just what we damn well please with the planet, traditional fountains are redundant. That is what makes Klaus Weber’s Sandfountain so timely. It’s a technological swansong which swaps a single water pump for some dozen sandblasting units. The sand will erode the concrete and you can already see the disconcerting way it shifts and cascades.’
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Charles Ray Ink Line (1987)
‘Ink Line is a sculpture/drawing/fountain consisting of a stream of jet-black ink pouring from a dime-size hole in the ceiling into a dime-size hole in the floor. Initially Ink Line looks like a strand of yarn strung the height of the gallery, a pulsating Fred Sandback sculpture, a free-floating Barnett Newman zip, or a disembodied Sol LeWitt. Get close and you’ll realize the line is liquid, glimmering, the consistency of syrup, moving fairly fast, fluctuating slightly, and thinner at the bottom than at the top. The ink forms a weird climatological aura around itself, slightly changing the humidity of the room.’
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Bertrand Lavier Fountain (2014)
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Bartosz and Malgorzata Szydlowska Fountain of the Future (2014)
‘A bright yellow statue of Vladimir Lenin answering a call of nature has been installed in Nowa Huta, the ‘ideal socialist town’ built on the edge of Krakow in the Stalinist era. Fountain of the Future, as the work has been dubbed by artists Bartosz Szydlowski and Malgorzata Szydlowska, references a statue of Lenin that once took pride of place in the district. The diminutive yellow version is a replica of a communist-era work which anti-regime activists tried to blow up on several occasions during the 1970s and 1980s.’
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Kasia Fudakowski Watch what you say (2019-24)
‘A speech-activated fountain which essentially converts words into water. If you speak into the microphone, water will drip into the bucket, threatening to overflow and electrocute you if too many words are spoken.’
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Aldo Froese Fountain #5 (2010)
‘A waterflow is directed through the frame of a wheel barrel. As time passes, the water changes color and turns from clear to yellow, orange, red, brown and ends up as almost black.’
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teamLab Universe of Water Particles under Satellite’s Gravity – Gold (2014)
‘The fall of water is calculated using physical laws and a waterfall is simulated that is attracted by the satellite’s gravity. The simulated waterfall is then projection-mapped onto a life-size model of satellite ALOS-2. The water is expressed as a continuum of hundreds of thousands of water particles that flow in accordance with computer calculations of particle interaction. The water particles that hit the satellite bounce off and circulate around the satellite until they evaporate. Once an accurate water flow simulation has been constructed, 0.1% of the water particles are selected and lines are drawn in relation to them. The waterfall is expressed as the combination of these lines. Behind these lines exist thousands of water particles, and the curvature of the drawn lines is based on their overall interaction. The waterfall video artwork is created in 3-D space and uses what teamLab calls ultrasubjective space, the logical structure of spatial recognition used in premodern Japan.’
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Bruce Nauman One Hundred Fish Fountain (2012)
‘The Nauman sculpture, one of the largest artworks the artist has ever made, is a functional fountain comprised of 97 bronze casts of fish that are suspended throughout the air that noisily shoot water out of their mouths into a large basin below, occasionally coming to a complete halt.’
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Andrew Salomone Vomiting Doll Punch Bowl Fountain (2015)
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‘English artist Anna Brownsted left 100,000 pennies in an abandoned public fountain in Cambridge, over the weekend, in a bid to explore human nature. The money was all stolen in just one day. The coins were placed in the fountain at Quayside, in Cambridge, at 8 am on Saturday, and were supposed to be left there for 48 hours. However, by 9 am on Sunday, over 99% of the coins had been removed from the fountain, despite clear signs informing passers-by that the fountain was under constant CCTV surveillance. Only £1.66 worth of pennies were left.’
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Roman Signer Kayak with Fountain (2015)
‘And out on the terrace there was another bloody kayak – this one had been put on top of a fountain and had a hole put in it so it looked like it had sprung a leak! LOL. ART.’
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Helmut Smits Street Fountains (2002)
‘Small water pumps in existing pot-holes in the road surface. When it rains, small fountains appear.’
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Walid Raad Comrade leader, comrade leader, how nice to see you (2022)
single channel video, looped, no sound, 4 paper cutouts
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Miķelis Mūrnieks Behavioral Sink, 2024
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Doug Aitken Fountain (earth fountain) (2013)
‘Fountain (Earth Fountain) (2012) is blatantly derivative of a more famous work. In a large rectangular vitrine the letters “A-R-T”, built from Lucite, ooze smooth creamy mud resembling milk chocolate. It immediately recalls Robert Rauschenberg’s Mud Muse (1971)—itself a large rectangular vat filled with mud rigged to bubble and sputter like lava. The use of the word “ART” here merely underlines one obvious subtext of Rauschenberg’s piece: that something as ubiquitous and abject as mud could so effectively be corralled into the realm of art. This makes Aitken’s rather polished version more like CliffsNotes for a canonical work than anything else.’
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Tue Greenfort Crystal Fountain (2014)
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Guillaume Paris Fountain (1994)
‘The video is shown on a cubic monitor, placed directly on the floor, in a corner of a room. The central figure (the Pinocchio from the eponymous 1942 Disney feature) is “de-animated” – inanimate – while the water surrounding it flows continuously. A perfect loop simulates the regular movement of water and a linear sound recording (white noise of water flowing) accompanies the image. The schematic drawing (simple shapes, bright colors), combined with the homogeneous and regular sound of the water flowing contrast with the uneasy nature of the subject. The inscription of image and sound within a protracted time frame, with neither beginning nor end, hampers our understanding of the event and freezes the narrative dimension of the scene.’
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Micah Brynes MAJESTIC FOUNTAIN ON TOP OF THE SALESFORCE TOWER (2017)
‘“The San Francisco skyline has been forever changed by the large erect Salesforce tower thrusting up into the heavens. While it is a glorious sight to behold, I think we can make it better!! I propose to install an artistic fountain at the tip of the tower (above the shaft). To conserve water we will build 2 large spherical water tanks at the base of the tower that will collect and recycle the water as it flows down the shaft of the building.”’
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Santo Tolone Fontana Angelica (2014)
‘Santo Tolone’s immersive “Fontana Angelica” is a working fountain based on a design by early 20th century architect Piero Portaluppi. As the name hints, the original fountain would have been decorated with angels, but Tolone’s version is stripped down to just the plumbing of the fountain. What remains is a simple, structural beauty. It’s also an exhibition within the exhibition: Tolone curated a display of coins made by other artists in the pool, including works by John Baldessari, Tim Foxon, Nick Fusaro, Ryan Gander, Micah Lexier, Jonathan Monk, M/M, Alek O, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Wilfredo Prieto, Rob Pruitt, Yann Sérandour, Jack Strange, Santo Tolone, Amalia Ulman, and Anne de Vries.’
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Taro Shinoda Model of Oblivion (2006)
‘Inside the screens is a small room containing “Model of Oblivion,” in which a visceral red liquid is clinically pumped across “white cliffs,” creating a vision as sinewy as human muscles on a white table. Explaining his approach, Shinoda says: “In my mind, waterfalls are connected to oblivion. When I stare at a waterfall, I go into a daze and forget reality. But the essence of myself is always there, even when I forget everything. I tried to express that here in an abstract sense.”’
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Daniel Wurtzel Feather Fountain (2010)
Feathers, mirrors, fiberglass and air
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Sam Durant Proposal for Public Fountain (2013)
‘Proposal for Public Fountain centres on a fountain sculpted from black marble – a prototype for a larger installation in a public setting – together with a series of related graphite drawings. The structure features a reproduction of an armoured water cannon, which sprays a jet of water onto a hooded figure bearing an anarchist flag. Its note of polemic is a defining aspect of Durant’s art. Poised between detached commentary and acerbic critique, it recasts a contemporary episode of state authoritarianism in the ‘stately’ aesthetics of public stonework.’
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Slavs and Tatars Reverse Joy (2012)
‘Reverse Joy is an ambiguous fountain of joy. The fluid flowing out of its pump is carmine red. It is the carmine red of lips ready to sweet talk and of tongues able to roll (a recessive phenotype mostly found in the Slavic population of the Balkans). The pigment is fittingly produced out of Armenian and Polish cochineal. Slavs and Tatars’ works ceaselessly point to details such as these.’
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Olafur Eliasson Big Bang Fountain (2014)
‘Every few seconds it is illuminated by photoflash lightning. The image of the bright dancing water leaves a ghostly impression in the mind’s eye. Keep watching the flashes of silver water and you see blue impossible forms in the afterglow.’
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Robert Gober The Heart Is Not a Metaphor (2005)
‘Gober’s chapel in honor of September 11, 2001, originally shown at Matthew Marks in 2005, is one of the culminating rooms in the exhibition. At the front of the chapel are two doors through which one can barely make out a naked pair of legs submerged in a running bathtub. The child peeks through the cracked door and sees something it cannot understand—something it is, perhaps, not supposed to see.’
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Eli Hansen and Oscar Tuazon Huh (2012)
Toilet, stell, water, 68 X 36 1/4 X 47 1/4 inches
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Unknown Decapitated Head Drinking Fountain
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Vincent Houze Interactive Fountain Mapping (2016)
‘The result of a collaboration with AV&C;, an experiment where one can control a simulated liquid flow and watch it splash against a geometric sculpture. It was premiered during SEGD Xlab conference 2015 in New York. As in previous experiments the liquid simulation is driven by the nVidia library Physx FleX that I implemented in TouchDesigner, which is used for the mapping and overall set up.’
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Dan Flavin proposed fountain in memory of Pablo Picasso (1974)
Black ballpoint pen on white looseleaf notebook paper
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Thiago Rocha Pitta Inverted fountain (2003)
‘Thiago Rocha Pitta is best known for his “collaborations” with nature, outdoor interventions that harness its forces, processes, and beauty. Here he has created an inverted fountain by the side of a lake.’
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Bruce Nauman Three Heads Fountain (Juliet, Andrew, Rinde) (2015)
‘Three identical, scar-covered male heads, fed water through a tube and pierced to create thin jets of water, are hung by the neck.’
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The world largest dancing fountains, Burj Khalifa
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James Grashow The Cardboard Bernini (2012)
‘James Grashow is an artist who has built—among many other things—giant 15 foot tall fighting men, a city and an ocean using paper mache, fabric, chicken wire and cardboard. Several years ago, while visiting the home of his art dealer, he stumbled across some of his giant fighting men that had been put outside due to lack of space. They were disintegrating. Although it was deeply painful and shocking for him to see his work like that, it was also surprisingly beautiful. He felt that he was seeing the full arc of his artistic enterprise before him—including its end. So, Grashow challenged himself to embrace the “backend” of his process, and decided to build a giant cardboard fountain—a Grashow “Bernini.” From its conception, he intended this work to be put outside to disintegrate. Work on the fountain began in 2007 and was completed in 2010. Grashow installed the fountain outdoors at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, CT on April 1, 2012. It was there for a total of six weeks, after which time Grashow took his degraded cardboard masterpiece to the dumpster.’
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Denis Adrien Debouvrie Jeanneke Pis (1987)
‘Jeanneke Pis is a modern fountain and statue in Brussels, which was intended to form a counterpoint to the city’s Manneken Pis, south of the Grand Place. It was commissioned by Denis-Adrien Debouvrie in 1985 and erected in 1987. The half-metre-high statue of blue-grey limestone depicts a little girl with her hair in short pigtails, squatting and urinating. It is located on the east side of the Impasse de la Fidélité / Getrouwheidsgang (Fidelity Alley), a narrow cul-de-sac some 30 metres long leading northwards off the restaurant-packed Rue des Bouchers / Beenhouwersstraat. The sculpture is now protected by iron bars from vandalism.’
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‘In the late 1960s a 12-foot calcium carbonate cone spewing nearly boiling water formed in Nevada, resulting in this spectacular man-made geyser you can arrange to tour today. This three pronged geyser constantly sprays, depositing minerals and enabling growth of multi-colored algae on its surrounding natural terraces.’
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José Lerma Fountain (2014)
”A Critical Analysis of Central Banks and Fractional-Reserve Banking from Austrian School Perspective,’ an installation that takes form in the shape of a 10% fraction of a circular fountain which is flanked by mirrored walls. An essay by Spanish economist Jesus Huerta de Soto, from the Austrian School, serves as the inspiration for the work and title. The percentage reflects the minimum requirement of liquid assets the United States’ financial institutions are required to hold by law in order to operate. ‘A Critical Analysis…’ presents a contrast to the interaction the portraits have with each others’ reflections, instead of borrowing from the impressions of each piece to build on the final compositions, the fountain completes itself through the illusion of a whole in the mirrors, creating a kaleidoscopic effect. The installation is activated through performance in which water sounds are made by participants standing within the structure as sculptural elements of the fountain itself.’
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Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran Multi Limbed Mud Fountain, 2023
mud cob, straw, paint, LED rope, electrical cable, water
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Ghislaine Leung Fountain, 2022
‘A cascade of water piped in from a man-made lake above and raining down from a ceiling directly onto the floor of the subterranean gallery to cancel sound.’
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Wiseguy Fireworks All-in-one-eruption (2016)
‘The Most INSANE Fireworks Fountain EVER.’
*
p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thanks! Yeah, Carpenters, weird. I think I heard it playing in the supermarket or something. Love is looking for bros on the Virginia side of the river to come by and hang out with our wangs out, online gaming, talking shit, working out, showing off our cocks, and getting my bf’s little bro’s deep throat and anal slime all over our dicks and balls tonite until 4 am, G. ** Misanthrope, My guess, for whatever that’s worth, is that the gun thing was just a signal of how secretly fucked up he knows he is mixed with anger with himself misdirected at you, but I’m no analyst. Tough to say the least. Oh, shit, about the workstation. It’s getting sadistic. Try to squeeze all the pleasure you can out of the weekend, pal. ** _Black_Acrylic, Nice, a hat review from the hat connoisseur. Thanks, B. ** Tyler Ookami, Yeah. Attila from Mayhem sang for my friend Stephen O’Malley’s project Sunn0))) for a while, and even with someone as seemingly left of rightwards as him, before Stephen introduced me to Attila, he said don’t talk politics or tell him you’re gay. Thanks, super interesting fill-in on kawaii death metal, and for the Nick Shutter tip. I don’t think I know his stuff, and I’ll go fish around in his bandcamp, thank you! ** Poecilia, Sadly both logistics and financing will likely prevent the existence of that haunt, but I’m greatly appreciative that your imagination is game. ** Steve, Oh, allergies, right. Yury’s are going crazy too. Spring and its pollen confetti attack is here, at least in Paris. Hope the meds are miraculous. Kyle Polaski is a real twink porn star and those were his photos, but, as with all things slaves-related, whether he made that profile is highly questionable. Re: the anonymous comment, gosh, who knows. Would be surprised. PSF Records, that’s something worth re-investigating. ** PL, Hi. I’m okay. Really, I thought some of them were kind of cute. Not familiar, no, but I can educated myself. Excellent about the timely commission. There you go! Do alert me/us about that when it’s fruited. Zombietwt, nope, but you can bet I’ll investigate. Huh. Thank you! Have the best weekend whatever that requires. ** James, Extreme and sensible: the perfect human being? I assume ‘white me out’ means zonk him oblivious with a drug whose color is white, crystal meth being my guess. Probably because he’s not really a virgin. Consensual nonconsent is massively popular. I think the clue was in johnathan0115’s name. There are probably more dead twink porn stars than there are living twink porn stars, if you count the ones who qualified as ‘twinks’ before the term came into usage. ‘Sad If I Lost it’, lovely choice. If I could imbed it, I would. The unimaginative part about Hell is that generations upon generations of people subsequent to whoever thought it up are too lazy to imagine something completely different and are content to just redecorate some long dead person’s concept. Better back, congrats to you or I guess specifically to it. Paris has tons of people worthy of being social with but they’re not as friendly as the tons of people in LA who are worth being social with, but that’s why they’re cooler. Well, you had a hell of a day there. I just did a bunch of fucking work I have to do and dipped out to the tabac and supermarket. You probably won’t have a weekend as good as that, but never say never, and I hope you beat the odds. ** Steeqhen, Oh, okay, understood, thanks. Never played any of the ‘Sims’ games, I don’t know why. I didn’t even know you can play it with other people. For some reason, I’m not enticed by multi-player games/options. I guess I like suffering alone. Thank you, but unfortunately ‘RT’ has many conditions and little time to cure them, but we’re giving it basically the 24/7 college try. ** HaRpEr, Yeah, I was going to wonder why February got picked as the short month, but the answer is probably kind of uninteresting. We’re creeping into spring here. Crossfading, I guess. A new theater commission, how awesome. Your prof is a pip, and I will be curious to know who said person is once you’re in the clear. Your ghost kid idea sounds super interesting. It reminds me a teeny bit of our character Roman in ‘PGL’ who doesn’t want to die but rather use his death to facilitate an amazing disappearing act. So, up my alley obviously. Oh, shit, the program axing. Even there in the UK! In the US, they’re being incinerated minute by minute, but that’s not a surprise given the fascist in charge. Thanks, and about the suicide scene in ‘PGL’. One of my favorite moments in ‘The Devil, Probably’ is right before Antoine Monnier’s character goes into Pere Lachaise to have himself shot to death and pauses long enough to look in a window that’s emitting the sounds of a pleasant evening at home. Oh, I like compliments, they just make me tongue tied. So, thank you! ** alex, Hi, alex! Me too, ‘huskular’, I actually wrote it down for possible future use. We’ll get the film shown in Canada, I just don’t know how and where yet. Excellent about the writing and submissions! And the snow too. And you seeing Laurel Halo DJ. Nice. We’re extremely rushed to get ‘RT’ ready, so my Saturday evening will likely be just doing that. But oh well. So nice to see you! ** jay, Yes, MakeMeHomeless was a novel one. Even if nobody seemed to be interested in helping him fulfil his wish. Right, no, my back thing is because when I was about 11 years old I suddenly grew tall really fast, and my spine didn’t keep up, so I guess there is more space between my spinal bones than normal, and my problems are the result. An autoimmune nerve thing sounds much more daunting. I hope your back behaves like the ultimate slave this weekend and opens every excitement-packed door for you. Sorry for the mixed metaphor. xoxo, me. ** P, Hi! Thanks for coming back! Thanks a lot for filling me in about you. Maybe you know these LA-based queer skateboard artists/skaters/video-makers Bottom Feeder? The main guy, Mike, is good friends with a good friend of mine. They seem cool. I can imagine the frustrations you’re having, but, at least in the telling, it’s sounds vibrant and inspiring overall, no? Yeah, maybe it’s kind of same for me living here. I don’t have a ton of friends, but I do have a handful of great ones. And coming from California, it took me a while to get used to how not immediately friendly and open people are here., They’re much more cautious and self-protective. But I like that in a way too. Part of me likes feeling kind of alone and not fully understanding what people are saying and not having an instinctive understanding of the world they grew up in. If that makes any sense. Super interesting about your airbrushed t-shirt work. Your site looks really good, I mean your art and shirts on there. Very cool. Respect! Let me … Everyone, P is an artist and maker of t-shirts, and their work looks really exciting, and I highly recommend you go have a look. The site is called cock jock, and it’s here. Sure, l’d love a shirt, that would be amazing. I have a stupid allergy to clothing and dyes, but, if a shirt’s big I can wear a boring organic shirt underneath it as protection. A Roxy Music fanzine … Nice idea, obviously. Gosh, let me think. I really like them, obviously. I’m one of those people lucky enough to be old enough to have seen them live when Eno was in the group at the Whisky-A-Go-Go circa their first LP. Great, no? Have a really interesting weekend. How/what was it? ** nat, Wild, eh? Okay, I’ll crank up my imagination and go wild and see what you get put through. Thanks for the posts attention. Listen, I chuckle at the slave posts all the time. Your breakthrough sounds like a bonafide breakthrough. Congrats! You gotta eat what you gotta eat. Right? ** Dan Carroll, Hi. Thanks! ‘RT’ things will be dribbling out. Wild day. Uh, hm, I don’t know why I think ‘RT’ is probably a daylight movie since at least half happens at night. Maybe just because that desert daylight is so intense when it’s there. Roger Deakins sounds like a very wise soul. For a couple of years I was an art show reviewer on staff for Artforum, so I reviewed usually three shows a month for them. It was cool although they didn’t like reviews that were too negative or enthusiastic, which could be frustrating. I’ll go read your piece and look at your trees this weekend, thank you! Everyone, Do go do two things: read an art review by Dan Carroll here, and look at bunch of drawings of trees by him here. The tree drawings look really swell at first peek. ** Okay. This weekend you get the third iteration of my apparent interest in making posts about fountains. See you on Monday.
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