Anodyne

2012-02-24T15:02:00.001-08:00

All their lives they had slaved at some kind of dull, heavy labor, behind desks and counters, in the fields and at tedious machines of all sorts, saving their pennies and dreaming of the leisure that would be theirs when they had enough. Finally that day came. They could draw a weekly income of ten or fifteen dollars. Where else should they go but California, the land of sunshine and oranges?

Once there, they discover that sunshine isn't enough. They get tired of oranges, even of avocado pears and passion fruit. Nothing happens. They don't know what to do with their time. They haven't the mental equipment for leisure, the money nor the physical equipment for pleasure. Did they slave so long just to go to an occasional Iowa picnic? What else is there? They watch the waves come in at Venice. There wasn't any ocean where most of them came from, but after you've seen one wave, you've seen them all. The same is true of the airplanes at Glendale. If only a plane would crash once in a while so that they could watch the passengers being consumed in a "holocaust of flame," as the newspapers put it. But the planes never crash.

Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they've been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, war. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can't titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing.

(Nathaniel West, The Day of the Locust)

2012-02-24T09:38:00.000-08:00

"I went to LA. I love the space and light and architecture and vegetation there." (Stephen Shore in conversation with the author, 2006)

2012-02-23T09:26:00.000-08:00

"A survey was made of BROADWAY between Fourth and Seventh Streets, to determine building use, occupancy, and square footage utilized. The long plan represents not the familiar building footprint, but rather the compression of BROADWAY buildings against the street. The solid black line indicates a vacant building. The most obvious example of this is between Fourth and Fifth Street on the west side of BROADWAY where a few buildings in the center of the block are bracketed by the empty Broadway Department Store and the recently closed Newberry’s. A perpetual clearance sale forced all products down to the ground level, escalators were boarded up sealing off the upper floors, and finally the metal gate closed, leaving only the inlaid terrazzo sign “Newberry’s” in the sidewalk floor. Instantly these buildings become voids in the city, the modern ruins of BROADWAY."

2012-02-23T09:17:00.000-08:00

Metropolitan (50), 2012

2012-02-22T20:38:00.000-08:00

Metropolitan (48), 2012

2012-02-21T19:50:00.000-08:00

Metropolitan (47), 2012

2012-02-16T20:25:00.000-08:00

Metropolitan (46), 2012

2012-02-15T16:22:00.000-08:00

Metropolitan (45), 2012

2012-02-15T09:21:00.001-08:00

Metropolitan (44), 2012

2012-02-13T09:37:00.000-08:00

Metropolitan (43), 2012

2012-02-12T11:44:00.000-08:00

Metropolitan (42), 2012

2012-02-12T09:39:00.000-08:00

Metropolitan (41), 2012

2012-02-11T22:21:00.000-08:00

Metropolitan (32), 2011

2012-02-11T20:48:00.000-08:00

Metropolitan (40), 2012

2012-02-11T20:23:00.000-08:00

Metropolitan (39), 2012

2012-02-11T20:05:00.000-08:00

More Metropolitan

Some of the early Metropolitans are gone. The Google Street View cars are rolling through Los Angeles faster than I ever expected, and images I selected even a few months ago have now been erased and/or overwritten. I had hoped to keep the images "live" as long as possible, so that they could be zoomed, panned, etc. by anyone. But it looks like the price of keeping them live is permanently losing some of them, and while I like the freedom to examine, and maybe even criticize, my framing decisions, I also like specific qualities of specific images -- light, figures, etc., and don't want to lose those things. I wouldn't be a photographer if I didn't. So the images that appear here from now on will do so in a slightly different format, thereby achieving the same semi-permanance as paper prints or backlit display boxes.

2012-02-10T09:27:00.000-08:00

And Speaking of Exhibition...

The Metropolitans are as much a part of my practice as my "autonomous" photographs. My ideal exhibition would contain autonomous prints, appropriated prints, "location rephotography," backlit digital images, both appropriated and autonomous, and some new autonomous print works made with surplus Google Street View technology, which in spirit are about halfway between Scott McFarland's constructed multipart images and 19th-c. pinhole photographs.

New website for all of this stuff coming in due course.

2012-02-10T08:56:00.000-08:00

Metropolitan (38), 2012

Some of these are going to be exhibited later on this year. They exist in two formats -- framed laserjet prints, and backlit projections in off-the-rack "digital media frames" -- but each image has a preferred form; in other words, an image is either presented as a print or a backlit projection, but not in both forms. Editions of 1 + 1AP, except for an as-yet unproduced fundraising edition of 10 paper prints.

2012-02-10T08:35:00.000-08:00

Someone in NYC replicates a game that I enjoy playing with somewhat different material (what L. would call, only half-joking, "Another one of your 5 topics of conversation") in Vancouver, Los Angeles, and select overseas destinations.

2012-02-08T09:39:00.000-08:00

Farewell Lloyd Dykk: critic, journalist, curmudgeon, aesthetic judger. I never met Lloyd, but he wrote a few kind notes about Anodyne and some of the photographs that appear here from time to time. He was also a prime example of a combative public intellectual at work in a forum that wasn't really equipped in any way whatsoever to deal with him. LD always put me in mind of that other LD, a fellow "yeller for society." (Some more recent LD notes here, "guest columns" sprinkled throughout like muffin raisins).

2012-02-08T09:14:00.000-08:00

Canon G10, check. Google Street View rack mount, check. Homemade software bridge, check. Render engine, check. Ladder, check. Motif still unmolested, check. Lawn chair, check. Harsh bright winter sunlight? Not today, evidently.

2012-02-07T18:42:00.000-08:00

Relevant to my interests, and found totally by accident. If the source image was a New York Times crossword, it'd be a Saturday puzzle.

2012-02-07T18:30:00.000-08:00

Study for a photograph, 2012

2012-02-02T09:31:00.000-08:00

"Location: end of Tipton Way near Tipton Terrace off Figueroa Street in Highland Park - One block from M.'s home and studio."

2012-01-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

Stood up, and vanished into air

2012-01-18T22:23:00.000-08:00

The author escorts a winged friend off the premises. Photo courtesy "Flash" Fulford.

2012-01-18T21:36:00.000-08:00

A desk of white pine, sanded to a beautiful even golden finish and signed inside: "Preston/Brayshaw/Halme, 2012." #craftsmen

2012-01-18T21:31:00.000-08:00

I don't like much modern-radio music, but I've had this shuffling lo-fi blend of soft vocals, xylophone, and weird Eno-esque electronics on all afternoon.

(Let link finish loading and song will play)

2012-01-12T23:44:00.000-08:00

Reading (& studying) Jem Southam's The Painter's Pool (Nazraeli Press, 2006), a collection of full-page, highly abstract color landscape photographs. I'd reproduce, or at least link to, some images, but the photographs demand to be seen at contact print size or larger, and the blurry little thumbnails available at the V&A and elsewhere don't really do the pictures justice. (A highly pixellated, not very good version of the entire sequence available here)

Setting up a new bookstore on Commercial Drive -- PFB 3.0! -- and otherwise not around much for a few days. The stores look great right now, and improve daily.

2012-01-10T22:12:00.000-08:00

Dear Christopher Brayshaw,

Thank you for shopping at Gigapan Systems Live.

Your order no. 9491-6110 has been received.

2012-01-02T19:00:00.000-08:00

Up the Skytrain station steps, past the steep green muddy grass. A bare tree looming overhead. Grey tower-block behind it. Behind that, the sky. Stray sunlight edging dark grey clouds. A little rain falling; mixed scents of wet pavement and moist earth. Someone sleeping under a park bench in the churchyard. Just the shape of their body turned sideways, huddled in away from the rain.

2011-12-22T23:20:00.001-08:00

2012: Arizona Cactus Garden, Palo Alto, CA. Source de la Loue. Illuminated Hedge. War Game Tree.

2011-12-22T23:00:00.000-08:00

2011-12-19T21:56:00.000-08:00

ACT (Aesthetically Claimed Thing): Camera Obscura and Holograph Gallery, San Francisco, 1949

2011-12-19T19:00:00.000-08:00

Via the Georgia Straight: Christopher Brayshaw's Into Thin Air is a Quiet Revelation

"As a bookseller, rock climber, and inveterate art viewer, Brayshaw has taken a number of road trips to and through the United States, and his photographs reflect his travels. Or perhaps, more precisely, they reveal the way he pokes around the un-picturesque margins of wherever he happens to be, whether it’s Los Angeles, Las Vegas, or Brooklyn. He brings the same sense of dislocation to his hometown Vancouver, focusing on what he described in a recent interview with the Straight as “the overlooked, the broken—the blind spots in late industrial capitalism."

[...]

"Brayshaw is fascinated, he said, with 'photographic seeing and the abstract configuration of space.' He revels in the small details and optical effects his camera captures: a huddle of dried leaves, crumpled paper, and cigarette butts on a sidewalk in La Cienega; the glittery haze created by deteriorating UV film on glass in Antique Dealer’s Window; the swirling play of colour and line on a desert stream viewed through a tangle of thin, bare branches in Arroyo.

From Jeff Wall to Stephen Waddell, a number of Vancouver photographers have influenced Brayshaw’s work. His shot of the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, for example, obviously and concertedly refers to a series of digitally montaged photos of the same subject by Scott McFarland. 'You test yourself against people you admire,' Brayshaw explained. Another print, Blind, recognizes the enormous impact Wall’s photography and writing have had on his understanding of the medium.

At the same time that his art quotes many of his contemporaries, Brayshaw resists terms like homage, satire, and even commentary. He does, however, reveal a great interest in the creative possibilities of appropriation. Brayshaw’s photos, it seems, function not as mimicry of those he admires but as an investigation of what it is they do: he immerses himself in certain subjects, locations, and framing devices. It’s a fascinating and heartfelt project."

2011-12-15T22:13:00.000-08:00

ACT (Aesthetically Claimed Thing): Eddie Curtis ("With the 'CLASSY FUNKY SOUND' of the VELVET SUNRISE Orchestra & Chorus")

2011-12-11T22:21:00.000-08:00

On location, 11pm-2am

I know I'm not part of the life you had planned,
but I think once your body feels my hand
your mind will change
and your heart will lose its pain.

2011-12-10T14:48:00.000-08:00

"Book Description: published by the Fine Arts Gallery, The University of British Columbia, [Vancouver], 1970. Stapled Wraps. Book Condition: Very Good. First Edition. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall. 56 p. 125 ill. from photographs by the author. Text printed from typescript with marking pen cross-outs and ink annotations reproduced in facsimile. Ostensibly a manual on making landscape photographs, but actually a conceptual art piece and a parody of documentary photography, featuring banal roadscapes and views seen from the car window. Fragile, elusive publication, printed on highly acidic newsprint, with the original price, 25¢, printed in the lower right corner of the cover. Despite the poor quality of the paper, the contents are very good to fine. The booklet consists of 56 p., and includes text printed from [author's] typescript with his handwritten emendations in facsimile, numerous photographs from the car window distributed throughout, and a final 8 pages containing a reproduction of a contact sheet followed by a sequence of 38 photos of city streets and suburban landscapes. The lower outer corner of the cover (near the 25¢) is chipped; the same corner of the initial pages are also chipped, to a lesser extent, but with no loss of content."

2011-12-10T09:32:00.001-08:00

"Later, when Ged thought back upon that night, he knew that had none touched him when he lay thus spirit-lost, had none called him back in some way, he might have been lost for good. It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees."

2011-12-09T22:59:00.000-08:00

The Laziest River - Behavior-era Tennant/Lowe smiling somewhere across the water. Those tiny keyboard flourishes, the vibes at 2:55. A sound like the thoughts in my head in the LA County Arboretum, stalking cactus. For the longest time I thought (pace Tower of Sleep's recent poll) that Suicide Demo for Kara Walker was my favorite Kaputt track, but I might have been wrong.

Edit: the above is only 6 minutes of a 20 minute multi-part suite. I might be the last person on earth to know about this vinyl-only sequence, but it's Xmas and we're opening a third store and I'm not sleeping much between the 18-20 hour retail days. My head feels like it's full of Pop Rocks. But my new night photograph keeps coming along, and this totally unafraid music really does sound like thinking.

2011-12-09T20:04:00.000-08:00

"Am I [a] sensitive person? Sure, I am. I think it's better to be sensitive than to be insensitive. There are too many impolite, insensitive people in the world."

2011-12-04T15:48:00.000-08:00

ACT (Aesthetically Claimed Thing): Kevin Schmidt, Aurora With Roman Candle, 2007

2011-12-04T13:30:00.000-08:00

Off tonight to make (or more likely begin to make) a black and white night photograph, my first in a few years.

2011-12-04T10:30:00.000-08:00

This review is poorly written Academese ("That said, Graham’s work is located, nonetheless, in a modern paradigm as an exercise in understanding representation within historical trajectories.") and some of the lightboxes look pretty thin compared to Aberdeen or the Freud/Judd sculptures. Still: Smoke Break! The Constant Reader!

(Image: Rodney Graham, The Constant Reader, 1949, 2011. In 2011, a chichi antiques store occupies the premises, though there is a pretty good independent bookstore directly across the street)

2011-12-04T10:13:00.000-08:00

ACT (Aesthetically Claimed Thing): Drew's Thesis, by Eryne

"Drew's Thesis, by Eryne. Once upon a time, there was this water and it was in a stream. Scientists looked at the water and wondered, 'How much sediment can this water move, if this water can move sediment?' Then Drew spent years and years of time, and looked at every cat picture on the internet to learn the answer. The answer is, 'It depends.'"

2011-12-04T10:03:00.000-08:00

Brandon Lattu, dropping science:

"I’d advise artists to always consider their models of authenticity as both a realization of a point in social time and a constituent element of their construction of themselves as artists. Also, find something that you can make everyday, cheaply. I always shot a roll of pictures a day, processing them at Kmart, Bradlees, CVS, PhotoHut, Walmart, etc. From this, I got 10 years of images of the world for less than $5 a day from a period I couldn’t afford to produce much else. David Hammons made snowballs."

(Image: Brandon Lattu, Beacon, 1996, a photograph which made a deep impression on me when I first saw it at Margo Leavin in 1998. The simultaneous beauty and futility of that gesture)

2011-12-04T09:38:00.000-08:00

Ed Ruscha Recreations, by Eric Doeringer, whose recent Richard Prince photographs are also worth a look. Doeringer's practice is firmly situated on the Sturtevant-Pettibone-Levine axis close to my heart, though the more familiar I become with his recreations of seminal works of Conceptual and photoconceptual art, the more it seems to me that his work is closer in spirit to Rauschenberg's "Erased De Kooning," that is to say, serious, un-ironic, and not strictly "appropriative" or concerned with the elimination/destruction of "aura."

The remade Ruschas are really good because of the tensions they elaborate between the Ruscha "originals" and Doeringer's recreations. Material differences: qualities of light; patterns of wear. They must have been exhausting to make.

2011-12-01T19:21:00.000-08:00

Novelist and critic Michael Turner recently saw my photographs, and has some thoughts about them:

Currently at CSA Space is Into Thin Air, a selection of twelve digital photographs by Vancouver-based art writer, curator, photographer, bookseller and gallerist Christopher Brayshaw, taken between 2008 and 2011 in Vancouver, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York. The curator of the exhibition is Steven Tong, who likely had a hand in the sequencing of these works, a sequence I will follow in the writing of this review.

The first thing that comes to mind after viewing these pictures is the angle from which they are captured. In the first picture (Opuntia fiscus-indica, 2011), a cactus, like so many of those succulent fountains that greet us as we walk the streets of California’s largest city, stands at the edge of the sidewalk. From there, the photographer’s eye is drawn downwards (La Cienega, 2010), where curled leaves gather neatly at the base of the tree from which they have fallen and a ghost-like reflection dances in the shadows to the right. Following that, a garden of cacti (A Heterogeneity, 2011), where Latin nameplates, not fallen foliage, beckon at the base of these plants. Following that, the contents of a shop window (Antique Dealer's Window, Los Angeles, CA, 2010), after which the high-angle view is broken (In a Conservatory, 2011) by a dead-on view similar to the one that greeted us at the outset (Opuntia fiscus-indica). The difference here is that now, for the first time, the photographer is on the inside (of a glassed section of a building), looking out (past the cactus before him).

The sixth picture in the exhibition marks a shift in light, colour and subject. The photographer is still looking downwards, but this time on the outside looking in; in this instance, at a worker digging a hole, his back turned from the camera. Between the photographer and the worker is a gridded safety screen. After that, we are back in L.A., looking at the largest work in the show (Cosmopolitan Book Shop, Los Angeles, CA, 2010), a picture that hangs alone on the west wall, dividing the north and south walls of the gallery, and perhaps setting up an expectation for the second half of the exhibition. Or perhaps a review of what preceded it? Indeed, I see something of those curled leaves in the peeling letters of the book shop’s sign, a suggestion that the book shop, like many book shops these days, is headed for what might be its final winter. Like the hole-digging worker, and unlike the other pictures before it, the book shop is shot at some remove. But while the worker in the sixth picture is viewed with Waddellian admiration, there is something menacing about the book shop, where behind its counter sits a mean old man staring balefully at bursting shelves, with no signs of life between them.

Distance from the subject is both resumed and collapsed in the seventh picture (Blind, 2010). The focus here is not on what hangs in a smudged and dusty window but whatever is on the other side of the house that surrounds it, above which the sky is reduced to a small patch of blue and the house itself is a “blind” between photographer and subject, predator and prey. Are we disappointed, then, to find that the eighth picture (Coat Suspended from a Tree, 2008) is not worthy of such secrecy, that the union of a beige coat wedged neatly into the V of a tree looks as natural as the leaves at the base of the second picture, so natural in fact that it does not seem out of place and therefore hardly worth noticing? Of the tenth picture (Purity, 2011), a rain-soaked window sends us back to the grid between photographer and worker, and again we find the photographer on the inside looking out (or do we?). The eleventh picture (Surveillance Tower and Palm Tree, Livingston, CA, 2010) has the photographer outside once more, only this time he is looking up (for the first time in the exhibition) above a grassy knoll to a bright blue sky, before which stand traffic signs, light standards and a surveillance camera, all instances of social control, all aware of each other in this most constructivist of compositions. Of the final picture (Arroyo, 2010), the energy, though hidden, is gravitational: water pours out of a dusty mound into a creek hidden by brush. This work, to my mind, is the finest of the twelve pictures in the exhibition. A haunting composition, and a fitting end to an intriguing sequence.

What to make of this narrative? Given the photographer’s penchant for science-fiction, I am reminded of Philip K. Dick and his interest in the unraveling of the ordinary into the otherworldly, like that which lies on the other side of the aforementioned house (“Blind”). Maybe what “Ragle Gumm” sees (or thinks he sees) in Time Out of Joint (1959). Either way, after walking through Into Thin Air, I could only walk through it again.

But the artist is also an art critic, and this is significant too. Many of the pictures in this exhibition are reminiscent of the artists he has written on and curated. I mentioned Stephen Waddell in relation to the sixth picture (An Excavation), but that same picture also evokes an artist obsessed with holes and those who dig them: Jeff Wall. Cacti (specifically gardens) feature prominently in the work of Scott McFarland, while the coat in the tree looks like a "Roy Arden." Mike Grill also makes an appearance. But rather than see these works as derivative, what comes to my mind is not homage but a writer out for a walk with his camera, where the thoughts that occur to those who mull over what they write about are sometimes best expressed not in words but in pictures. I think Christopher Brayshaw – and curator Steven Tong – have reminded us of that with this thoughtful and worthwhile exhibition.

2011-12-01T09:29:00.000-08:00

The Wrap-Up

Proud to have been a very small part of this, and to recognize some of those non-YVR faces and places.

2011-12-01T09:02:00.001-08:00

A thoughtful letter from Stephen King to the NYT:

"Damaged, dangerous people like Lee Harvey Oswald are loaded guns; the combination of hatred and political extremism is the trigger."

2011-11-30T20:40:00.000-08:00

Many Indecisive Moments

"Mr Wall is happiest discussing the formal aspects of his work—its composition, scale, light, colour and grain. Although subject matter is paramount to the experience of realist art forms, Mr Wall claims that, for him, it is 'just the door that opens the way to the picture.' He identifies Paul Cezanne as a good role model because he 'detached himself from his subjects and just painted without getting ethically, morally, personally or politically involved.'"

There's a distinction between subject matter aesthetically validating a picture, and entering it on the level of form. I could never imagine photographing something that I didn't have imaginative sympathy for: rocks, trees, clouds, street debris, etc. The whole phenomenological world.

2011-11-30T14:01:00.000-08:00

"Like a turtle. Like a turtle. Like a turtle. Like a turtle. Like a turtle. Like a turtle. Like a turtle. Like a turtle. Yeah, but like a turtle. Like the animal, a turtle."

2011-11-29T22:39:00.000-08:00

"[T]his article has nothing to do with electronics or robots. But, it has a little bit of science, math, and physics. More importantly, it reminds everyone that success sometimes comes from sheer perseverance and will power, rather than complexity and ingenuity."

2011-11-28T20:32:00.000-08:00

Waste My Time, Please

BABY HIPSTER WITH NECK TATTOO [of Foucault's Archaelogy of Knowledge]: Do you know anything about this book?

CJB: What specifically are you asking me?

BHWNT: Have you read it?

CJB: You bet! Several times.

BHWNT: Is it good?

CJB: Yep.

BHWNT: Huh. [Puts book down. Leaves.]

Tonight's soundtrack: well-deserved double gin and tonic in takeout cup after a deluge of cranky, petulant, and just plain off-the-scale weird retail behavior, even by my own heavily jaded standards.

2011-11-28T13:52:00.000-08:00

CUSTOMER: How much is this book?

PFB STAFF: $10.50 and a little tax.

CUSTOMER: And you're going to give it to me for...?

PFB STAFF: $10.50. And a little tax.

CUSTOMER: Seriously?

PFB STAFF: Seriously.

And it's been like this all morning. Mercury retrograde.

In other news, an extroverted loudmouth with a baby strapped to his chest and a "Sophie the Giraffe" in one hand just stole a pen from me. Seriously.

2011-11-28T10:36:00.000-08:00

Winter: Otis Redding on the deck, white winter sunlight in the bare trees and on the stone facade of the ballet academy across the road. Radiator behind the desk ticking over.

2011-11-24T09:45:00.000-08:00

The author with Arroyo and Surveillance Tower & Palm Tree, sometime after midnight.

This exhibition is actually hung and taking place from 6-9pm tonight. If you're in the neighborhood, c'mon by.

Photograph by Steven Tong. Without whom, & etc.

2011-11-21T13:03:00.000-08:00

2011-11-21T09:47:00.000-08:00

JW In The Studio, August 2011

#2

A few shots at the very end of #1 of particular interest

2011-11-21T09:33:00.000-08:00

Christian Science Reading Room, Nanaimo, BC, 2011

Lattice, 2011

2011-11-19T13:56:00.000-08:00

STAFF MEMBER: Hey, where should I file this Gregory Crewdson retrospective catalog?

CJB: Mixed paper recycling?

2011-11-16T12:00:00.000-08:00

"Q: How difficult is it to raise money as a contrarian investor?

A: It’s always difficult. We get a forestry asset, and no matter how good the deal is, people look at forestry, and assume nobody makes money there, and they say 'I’m out.' So the business can be solid, the people can be solid, and the reputation can be solid, and it’s still difficult. The cost of capital is always at the wrong end of the curve.

But take the Thurso mill. We paid $1.2-million. The insurance replacement value alone was $851-million. The scrap value is worth more than that. It came with 320 hectares of land on the Ottawa river. Again, the land is worth more than that. People say it’s risky. We don’t think so."

2011-11-15T22:39:00.001-08:00

"Given the increased cash flow resulting from operational growth and the acquisitions indicated and the strong level of cash flow overall, an increasing portion of the Company's cash flow can be returned to shareholders in the future through increased dividends. The Company also intends to repurchase shares as deemed attractive and prudent."

2011-11-15T21:53:00.000-08:00

Brad Moore, Newland, Westminster, California, 2008

Euphorbia ingens, represent.

2011-11-15T16:51:00.001-08:00

Dear young photographer: surreptitiously photographing the Fred Herzog book in PFB's front window is not a bold photoconceptual gesture. Thanks for your attention.

2011-11-15T09:47:00.000-08:00

The Real and How To Find It: An Interview With Ken Lum

"The Real that exists outside what we can express in terms of language, I’m interested in that limit: When does art become non-art? And then there is the historical question of the relationship between art and life; that is a dialectic that has been in play for many decades. The Real for me comes into play because I am not satisfied with much art. I don’t think art the way it is conventionalized within the art system deals enough with all kinds of experiences. Generally speaking, when art starts shrinking down into the art system it becomes less interesting. That’s why I’ve always been interested in the signifiers of the street, and the relationship of real lives to the form of art. It's art but I want people to think: This is plausible; this could be a real thing."

Tennant/Lowe: The End of the World

2011-11-14T13:54:00.000-08:00

Christopher Brayshaw, Into Thin Air
CSA Space, Vancouver
24 November 2011 through 31 December 2011

Opening reception Thursday 24 November 2011, 6-9pm

This is actually taking place next week -- the last bits of the show are being printed and framed as I type -- and I'd love to see anyone who's in the neighborhood.

Foreshadowing:

An Excavation: print 11.67” x 8.75” on 14” x 10” sheet; will exhibit grain at printed size

Antique Dealer’s Window: print 13.5” x 18” on 16” x 20” sheet. Please do not alter color/contrast.

Arroyo: print 11.98” x 11.90” on 16” x 20” sheet

Blind: print 8.88” x 9.84” on 10” x 14” sheet

Chocolate Factory Cactus Garden: print 14.00” x 18.67” on 16” x 20” sheet

Coat Suspended From a Tree: print 12.19” x 8.93” on 14” x 10” sheet

Cosmopolitan Book Shop: already printed

A Heterogenity: print 14.43” x 18” on 16” x 20” sheet

In a Conservatory: print 14.08” x 15.57” on 16” x 20” sheet. Please do not correct blown out highlights in sky

La Cienega: already printed

Nooksack Falls: print 12.00” x 8.86” on 14” x 10” sheet

Opuntia ficus-indica: already printed; borrowed from private collection

Purity: print 14.26” x 14.16” on 16” x 20” sheet. Minor or no color/contrast correction; image should retain a “flat,” low-contrast feel

Spare: print 4.5” x 5.12” on 8” x 10” sheet; will exhibit grain at printed size

Surveillance Tower & Palm Tree: already printed

All images are correctly sized at 300+ DPI.

Without Whom Dept.: Helpsy, Rose, Steven Tong, Adam Harrison, Jamie Tolagson, Peter Culley, Evan Lee, Brad Phillips, Susanne Goodison, Fairfield Porter, Sam Harrigan, Keith Freeman, Dorothy Bartoszewski, Sylvia Grace Borda, Claudia Beck, Andrew Gruft, Lee Bacchus, Paul Vassallo, Ron Terada, Kevin Madill, John Latta, Scott McFarland, Jeff Wall. Thanks, guys.

2011-11-12T12:21:00.000-08:00

Via my old editor Tom Spurgeon, a long, moving and often surprising story about Bill Mantlo, a name instantly familiar to any 80s comics reader.

"In 1985, Mantlo took advantage of a tuition reimbursement program Marvel offered and put himself through law school, writing scripts by day and taking classes by night. In 1987, he passed the New York State Bar and while he still wrote the occasional comic book, as well as starting various novels and screenplays, he considered himself a full-time lawyer. He received a number of offers to work for real estate legal firms but he opted to work for the Legal Aid Society, a private not-for-profit that provides free criminal defense representation.

Mantlo made about $40,000 a year at Legal Aid, which was considerably less than he was making at Marvel. But that was almost the point: he became a lawyer mainly because he felt he had done all he could with comics to send messages about social causes. In law, he could help people more directly."

2011-11-09T15:57:00.000-08:00

"'But that boat--' he cried. 'He's been building that boat for seven years that I know of. The blocks rotted out and he made concrete blocks. Every time he gets it nearly finished he changes it and starts over again. I think he's nuts. Seven years on a boat.'

Doc was sitting on the ground pulling off his rubber boots. 'You don't understand,' he said gently. 'Henri loves boats but he's afraid of the ocean.'

'What's he want a boat for then?' Hazel demanded.

'He likes boats,' said Doc. 'But suppose he finishes his boat. Once it's finished people will say, "Why don't you put it in the water?" Then if he puts it in the water, he'll have to go out in it, and he hates the water. So you see, he never finishes the boat -- so he doesn't ever have to launch it.'"

2011-11-08T09:41:00.000-08:00

Vancouver, 7 December: Ivan Sayers, costume historian, lectures at the University Women's Club. Virginia Newton-Moss wears a British ensemble c.1910, from Sayers's collection

2011-11-05T20:15:00.000-07:00

Old friends relaxing, Napier, NZ, 5 November 2011.

"Three seasons, two hemispheres, and sixty-three gigs later."

2011-11-05T20:07:00.000-07:00

"Certain empty houses that seemed to stare like the faces of people suffering from terrible mental illnesses. An empty barn on the outskirts of town, the hayloft door swinging slowly open and closed on rusty hinges, first disclosing darkness, then hiding it, then disclosing it again. A splintered fence on Kossuth Street, just a block away from the house where Mrs. Dunning and her children had lived. To me that fence looked as if something -- or someone -- had been hurled through it and into the Barrens below. An empty playground with the roundy-round slowly spinning even though there were no kids to push it and no appreciable wind to turn it. It screamed on its hidden bearings as it moved. One day I saw a roughly carved Jesus go floating down the canal and into the tunnel that ran beneath Canal Street. It was three feet long. The teeth peeped from lips parted in a snarling grin. A crown of thorns, jauntily askew, circled the forehead; bloody tears had been painted below the thing's weird white eyes. It looked like a juju fetish. On the so-called Kissing Bridge in Bassey Park, among the declarations of school spirit and undying love, someone had carved the words I WILL KILL MY MOTHER SOON, and below it someone had added: NOT SOON ENOUGH SHES FULL OF DISEEZE. One afternoon while walking on the east side of the Barrens, I heard a terrible squealing and looked up to see the silhouette of a thin man standing on the GS & WM railroad trestle not far away. A stick rose and fell in his hand. He was beating something. The squealing stopped and I thought, It was a dog and he's finished with it. He took it out there on a rope leash and beat it until it was dead. There was no way I could have known such a thing, of course . . . and yet I did. I was sure then, and I am now."

2011-11-02T20:32:00.000-07:00

We break it all down
In hopes that you might understand
Don't make no profit for the Man

2011-10-29T22:10:00.000-07:00

What Kind of Fool (Demo for Barbra Streisand)

What have I done? I only apologize
For being, as they say, the last to know....

2011-10-24T22:05:00.000-07:00

Christopher Brayshaw, Into Thin Air
CSA Space, Vancouver
24 November 2011 through 30 December 2011

2011-10-22T22:41:00.001-07:00

Relevant to my interests

One of the most beautiful things I've heard in a long time.

2011-10-07T22:34:00.001-07:00

2011-10-01T13:39:00.000-07:00

In a Conservatory, 2011

Old friends. Brick-and-rock doorstop(s) included as a nod to another old friend, a great photographer of desert plants.

2011-09-30T18:58:00.000-07:00

Civil Service Book Shop, NYC, 2011

One of an occasional series of bookstore portraits.

2011-09-30T17:13:00.001-07:00

"Under these circumstances, the artist has been advised to wait. To wait for what? Until there are no more juries."

2011-09-30T15:35:00.000-07:00

Great Falls of the Passaic, Paterson, NJ, 2011

2011-09-30T15:17:00.000-07:00

Gyre, 2011

2011-09-30T14:13:00.000-07:00

Palm, 2011

2011-09-15T12:59:00.000-07:00

YVR -> YYC -> EWR -> NYC

Back soon.

2011-09-11T19:30:00.000-07:00

Harvey, 2011

2011-09-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

KELLY: What is it you do, Mr. Dowd?

ELWOOD: Oh, Harvey and I sit in the bars and - have a drink or two - play the juke box. And soon the faces of a-all the other people - they turn toward mine - and they smile. And they're saying, 'We don't know your name, mister, but you're a very nice fellow.' Harvey and I --

CLOSE SHOT ELWOOD
As he sits on bench & leans against brick wall - hugs himself as he soliloquizes -

ELWOOD: -- warm ourselves in all these golden moments. Uh - we've entered as strangers -- soon we have friends. And they come over and they - they sit with us, and they drink with us, and they talk to us. And they tell about the big terrible things they've done --

CLOSE UP SANDERSON & KELLY
Looking off & listening - intent -

ELWOOD O.S.: -- and the big wonderful things they'll do.

CLOSE SHOT ELWOOD
Sitting on bench - talking - smiles - leans forward - sad -

ELWOOD: - Their hopes and their regrets, their loves and their hates. All very large, because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar. And then - I introduce them to Harvey. And he's bigger and grander than anything they offer me. And - and when they leave, they leave impressed. The same people seldom come back, but - that's - that's envy, my dear. There's a little bit of envy in the best of us. That's too bad. Isn't it?

2011-09-11T09:27:00.001-07:00

Firemen lined up at attention in front of the half-mast flag at the firehall. Soft blue sky.

2011-09-09T22:27:00.000-07:00

2011-09-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

Unfinished business on the east coast, September 16-24 2011

2011-09-04T19:58:00.000-07:00

Weeds, 2011

(nb. that lurker in the foreground)

Reading: Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy

2011-09-04T10:51:00.000-07:00

COFFEE GUY: What are you guys doing in the neighborhood?

TOURIST: One of the best bookstores in Canada is in this neighborhood! We read about it on the internet.

COFFEE GUY: Well there's his...

2011-08-28T19:28:00.000-07:00

An acoustic guitarist in a park. Late afternoon, lazy summer sunlight. Folding chair on the grass. Evergreens behind him; little romping dogs at his feet. Make a picture of this.

2011-08-28T12:49:00.000-07:00

Pulpfiction Books, Vancouver's largest independent used & new bookstore, is hiring for a full-time (40 hr/week) position, available immediately, and two part-time (20-30 hr/week) positions with flexible start dates later on in the fall.

Successful candidates will have:

• AT LEAST 2 years of used/new bookselling experience, with additional experience warmly welcomed. Please note that bookselling experience is ESSENTIAL for these current positions; while we *theoretically* welcome resumes from folks with no bookstore experience at all, we're super-busy at the moment and have no time to train new staff from scratch.

• The ability to think quickly under pressure in an absurdly busy retail environment, and abundant common sense.

• Deep familiarity with relatively obscure authors and micro-genres. If Kenneth Patchen, the Strugatsky brothers, Jack Ketchum, Tucker Coe, Maureen McHugh and Victor Serge are familiar to you, you'll probably get along just fine with us.

• Previous cash handling experience and basic familiarity with a variety of record-keeping systems and databases (Book Manager; Word; Excel; Filemaker)

• Patience in the face of endless requests for books you've never heard of (every day, guaranteed!). And bibliographic research skills, that will help you educate yourself, your co-workers, and customers about the same.

• The ability to work a variety of rotating shifts, including evenings, weekends, and holidays.

• The willingness to accept responsibility, and the ability to work unsupervised for long periods of time.

• A positive, upbeat, non-Type A personality.

• No serious physical ailments. All of our positions involve standing on your feet for long periods of time, plus frequently lifting 30-40 pound boxes of books.

• A minimum time commitment of one year.

We offer:

• Competitive compensation. None of our positions are minimum wage.

• Fully paid extended medical benefits, including dental, for full-time staff.

• An unparalleled opportunity to work in a creative, entrepreneurial, non-corporate environment.

• The opportunity to take on increasing responsibilities, and to be compensated accordingly.

If interested in either full- or part-time work, please send a detailed resume, including the names and contact details of at least three current references, to pulpbook@gmail.com. Please, NO phone calls or walk-in requests for work. Please also note that our part-time positions are a MINIMUM of 20 hours a week, and probably not suitable for those enrolled full time in school.

We thank all applicants in advance for their interest, but regret that we will be only able to contact selected applicants for interviews.

2011-08-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

"The businessman I met 25 years ago violated every rule of management. He was not a consensus-builder but a dictator who listened mainly to his own intuition. He was a maniacal micromanager. He had an astonishing aesthetic sense, which businesspeople almost always lack."

(Norcea on Jobs, though broadly applicable to present company, too)

2011-08-26T20:31:00.001-07:00

View From Whalley, B.C.

2011-08-22T18:25:00.000-07:00

PFB is looking for a candidate for a full time, 40 hour a week position. The successful applicant will have substantial new and/or used bookstore experience, or will be able to fake the same under pressure. Perks: above-average compensation, health plan. Disadvantage: eccentric manic-depressive boss. Resumes in any format to pulpbook@gmail.com. Please, no phone calls or walk-in requests for employment.

2011-08-17T18:48:00.000-07:00

This is a pretty accurate description of my political beliefs, such as they are. I still often feel like a Smart People's Club outsider.

"'I don't know' is not an apology. There's no shame. It's a simple statement of fact. When Richard Feynman didn't know, he often worked harder than anyone else to find out, but while he didn't know, he said, 'I don't know.'"

[...]

"I sure don't know what to do about an AA+ rating and if we should live beyond our means and about compromise and sacrifice. I have no idea. I'm scared to death of being in debt. I was a street juggler and carny trash -- I couldn't get my debt limit raised, I couldn't even get a debt limit -- my only choice was to live within my means. That's all I understand from my experience, and that's not much."

2011-08-12T12:54:00.001-07:00

"Corporations are people, my friend."

Uh, no.

2011-08-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Gold, my favorite food critic, reviews Laurent Quenioux's run at LA's Starry Kitchen, a restaurant (& chef) after my own heart. The "LA Gastronaut" meal described doesn't really do it for me, though, beaver and bear, however legally and "humanely" sourced, properly belonging to the "octopus and cat" category of non-edibles.

"When the skewers of sauteed lamb sweetbreads came out, they instantly disappeared from the communal platters of crushed peanuts on which they were resting, and I noticed that nobody pushed the roasted duck gizzards and duck hearts away from the endive salad. There was a raw plate of cod eggs, thinly sliced poached monkfish liver, tongues of local uni and a raw quail yolk buried in its shell under fat salmon eggs. The composition was marred only by chewy wisps of undercooked sea cucumber. (Sea cucumber should be served either raw or cooked into full submission.) A stack of bone marrow, calves' feet and rare, seared sea scallop tasted like a marine take on pieds et paquets, dominated by the softness and stickiness of the foot's developed gelatin."

Depicted: Summer vegetables, hamachi, meyer miso curd, black sesame soil. Photograph by Anne Fishbein.

2011-08-08T20:59:00.001-07:00

Metropolitan (36), 2011