New Orleans for June into July

Hello from New Orleans.  I arrived June 12th and am settling into the Wooden Tent for my month long sojourn.  I am staying with my dear friend who is amazing and inspiring.  Last Saturday we went around to the Second Saturday gallery openings.  The New Orleans gallery scene is so different from New York.  It was nice to see so many people out on a hot summer evening to look at art.  I am taking lots of pictures so far, but no projects have emerged as of yet.  So far my energies have been spent rescuing a cow trough to turn it into a swimming pool and finding myself the oldest “freespirit” cruiser bicycle that exists.

There are paper wasps building a nest on the window sill and I am fascinated and repulsed by them, maybe I should do some research, as I am living with an architect and watching her wasps fan their nest.  I had read a book on insect and bird nests, fascinating stuff, but I was disappointed by the book, maybe I will check out the library down here, I bet they have air conditioning.

transparencies

I saw Olga Chernysheva’s show at Foxy Productions on Friday.  I was interested in the draped transparencies.  I wish the lighting in the gallery was a bit more dynamic, but it wasn’t.  I guess it goes with the tone of the work.  Maybe I should just print on transparencies, it would save me all those hours of delicate cutting.

Back to work

Back from an extended vacation, lots of photos taken and books read.  Last night I was watching George Mellies films, I didn’t know he had been a magician, it all makes sense now.  Editing film as a slight of hand.  I am debating making some films or videos, maybe just short ones like Mellies’.

I am back at the studio more often:

This is what I have been working on all summer:

Hopefully new photos of it will be taken soon.  It is almost done, I have clips holding the glue as it dries.

I saw the Joel Sternfeld show at Luhring Augustine.  A stunning show, inspiring me par as usual to start using 4×5 again.  Massachusetts looks amazingly serene in contrast to end of summer in New York.  The scale of the images are akin to large bay windows and you just want to fall into the scenery.

one last note before I leave

Did anyone see this? I am usually not one for spectacles, but this is amazing.

Also, turns out I am stopping in Malmo Sweden, and visiting this gallery: http://www.krets.info/

The image reminds me of the Unmonumental show at the New Museum, I should have gone back and seen how Urs Fischer’s candle lady faired. The work was very similar to the to the Whitney Biennial, which after more time and meditation, I do like more of it that I thought.

tomorrow I leave for Europe

I am officially on Spring Break! But, well, no Daytona for me this year — anyway, I burn. I am off to visit my dear dear friend who is studying in Copenhagen tomorrow, and then heading to Berlin for a few days to see the Biennale. Yipee!

I went to the Whitney Biennial

which was, well just as it was described by the New York TImes. I did enjoy the Omer Fast piece, he is so cool. I will always remember seeing his work in “Traveling Scholars” at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 2001 as I was in college and just learning video.

I was really into the Adam Putnam “Green Hallway (Magic Lantern)” piece. As I am completely engrossed with pre-cinema these days it was wonderful to see another person with similar interests. Speaking of pre-cinema, I can across this amazing blog http://bioscopic.wordpress.com/ this guy is so rad! I don’t even want to admit to how much time I spent earlier this week looking through his archive of wonderful links. I wish I’d seen it when I started building my praxinoscope a few months ago.

To see my praxinoscope, please visit my website www.alixwinsby.com

It has recently been updated by the oh so talented www.georgekotsovos.com , and he takes photos too : www.theworkofgeorgekotsovos.com

I will be gone until the 28th of April. Hopefully I will be too busy to write. In the mean time, do what I do when I procrastinate writing a paper: read Alec Soth’s old blog, it is truly beautiful, too bad he is too busy these days to write.

books between classes

I don’t have much time to read these days with my excessive reading schedule for my Theory and Crit class. Many many readings of great interest, and papers which I have to write of less than no interest. Anyway I just started reading this book River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, by Rebecca Solnit. It is amazing, and has a great title. I want to live in the technological wild west. This is the second Rebecca Solnit book I’ve read, the first being A Field Guide to Getting Lost, which was phenomenal.

time to start a blog.

Today my world was completely blown out of the water. I came across this video:

and then this one:

and now I want to be Theo Jansen’s disciple. I immediately wrote my dad to tell him that I am going to drop out of the Hunter MFA program and go to engineering school, so that I can make amazing kinetic sculptures like these. Then I read his bio on his website (http://www.strandbeest.com) and realized that I need not be so rash, while he did study science, he was a painter for many years. Maybe there is hope for me, and I can learn enough mechanical engineering without dropping everything.

So now I have this blog to keep track of my interests and influences, so they don’t slip from one ear out the other.