26 Weeks

Well this blog had a good run but I’m in the process of moving it directly over to my my site. For the two people who read this please note the move to here.

What Brothers Are For

This weekend I had the opportunity to head south to moab for a weekend with all but one of my brothers plus one sister. It has been a while since we’ve all been together and I’m left wondering why, because I haven’t laughed this much in a long time. From mid thirties to late teens we were the prime age for epics, statically that is, but this weekend didn’t break my new promise for no more epics. In between the hours of laughter we managed to ride a few trails and hit the local swimming hole. When we left moab with just a broken derailer, two broken chains, one case of “swellbow” and sun damaged skin we felt lucky.

The highlight from trip comes from our evening ride on the slickrock trail. and one location in particular. we pulled up to this ledge with in which the trails drops straight off into a very large sand box (possibly quicksand). My brief knowledge of physics and a few years of experience riding a bike lead me to verbalize my concern and wonder, “How can anyone possibly ride this and not “endo”. Not giving me time to work out the possibilities my little bro, wanting to prove his new bike calls out “Like This” and rides over the edge. For a moment I was impressed He makes the four foot drop effortlessly, but what he underestimated was the holding power of the quicksand that at this point had risen well over his axles. With all the forward momentum he continued even though his bike remained stationary. I’m laughing at this point. Once he buries himself we jump down sans bikes to get a closer look at the swirling sand and help him out. Once he’s up and smiling the laughter continues and becomes compounded when we notice that his teeth in addition to every thing else are covered with sand. Thanks EQ that could have been the best thing I’ve witnessed on a bike.

337 Project » Salt Lake’s Attempt to Integrate ‘Art’ Into the Community—at Least for a Little While

This post was originally supposed to be serve as announcement about an upcoming art project 337 Project Which opens May 18th in Salt Lake City, but instead I feel like a pre-critique must be placed on the project. My comments are by no way intended to injure or offend the organizers of this project, instead I hope they make artist in general question what it means to create and really what are the goals that should be strived for. This pre-critique will cover three main things I have problems with—including: What the project communicates beyond the individual artist messages, The complete lack of an Objective, and third No spaces between words.

Afraid of Art/Artist But Don’t Want to Be Seen An Artophobe

Everyone has seen graffiti at some point in their life, yes even if you live in provo. but whether you view it is as art or nuisance depends on your education, background, or relationship to the property where it is present. I could keep going on this but this topic is better reserved for another article about graffiti. Instead I want to point out the convenience of this project with regard to it being in and around a building scheduled for demolition. The message being portrayed from this
is one that says art is frivolous. That statement, and this project are doing more to injure art than any spray-paint-vandal, or fascist regime ever could. The injury comes in the form of an accepting of the idea of Trial Runs or Safe Art. This idea of—I’m willing to let you “artist” create something, since I’m going to throw it away anyway—is not alright and devalues not only the individual artist but the art community in general.

Even the Non-Objective Artist had an objective

In our art starved region of the west this project illustrates just how many artist and how few patrons there are. 114+ plus artist who are desperately seeking recognition, voice, or simply something to fill their time with. I fear that this push with no real objective or theme will either a. turn the 337 into a craft fair featuring street artist, or b. create something that resembles a train wreck.

Your Voice is Stronger With Good Type

Perhaps this is case of hypocrisy, but then my site is really only read by 3 people and not meant to serve as a community invite, but the website 337project.org could be better. And as it appears that it will last longer than the actual building perhaps added emphasis into the website would be a better investment.

With all this said I’m really excited for them to open the doors on the 18th and prove me wrong

I invite everyone (all three of you who read this blog) to make an effort to be there on the 18th, unless you live in texas for example. The opening event should be a lot of fun and I’m interested to see if they truly changed the building into something that’ll compliment Art or grossly represent visual vomit attempting to call it self art.

Have a few minutes visit the ever amazing Marcfolio.com

I’m not sure when marc made the changes to his site last, but his latest edition is really fun. Visit the site then tell your friends!

Snowbasin Meltdown

Last week when I strolled into work with a 15 foot red canoe on my car I had a lot of explaining to do—mostly why I had a 15 foot red canoe on my car. “I’m going to be in a race this weekend” I replied. And since people are asking and I really don’t mind bragging I’ll tell you about our results. With a time of just under 29 minutes we were pretty much a shoe in for 1st place, thanks to Kevin, and his brother-in-law clay. This is my second year on the podium and I believe Kevin’s third. I guess I should let you know a little more about the the actual race. The race begins at the top of Snowbasin where one skis to the main plaza then someone hops on a bike rides down the old Snowbasin road to the Anderson (Andersen) cove boat ramp, where the third and final portion of the race is completed usually in a kayak.

Park City Television was there and I believe they have a little photo montage up on their site right now. or you can see photos from the race here.

7 old bananas 2 cups expired flour and a couple packets of sugar.

I’ve been saving old bananas in anticipation for tonight, and now I’m about to go try my improvised banana bread.

Tonight We Eat Flowers and Wait for People Who Are Hot

Three days in one, The weather in the Western United States has been unseasonably warm creating a magical unusual feeling of summer; my employers are prancing around their offices in spring attire, the rivers are flowing, the street vendors have doubled in force, and there appears to be an abundance of really good looking people out and about.* These topics also seem to be weighing heavily on peoples minds as it seems to occupy the bulk of conversations these days, people who’d normally tell you about the latest thing they’ve read are instead commenting about their excellent lunch they had while sitting outside, they stress outside several times in the course of the conversation. I’m not complaining about this phenomena I’m probably more guilty than anyone, instead I just wanted to write about the strange, but seasonally appropriate behavior—For example tonight rather than my usual dinner that consist of something from either my favorite restaurant I ate the flower of the artichoke plant simply because I felt like something different. It was lovely I might add.

Another interesting event that has added to the peculiar summeresque atmosphere is the forest fire burning only a few hundred meters from the home where I’m staying. It was strange to crawl into bed last night and see the red glowing embers from my window which is normally pitch black. I remember thinking I should be more concerned about the fire than I was, but instead I simply opened my book Visible Signs and fell asleep reading it. I hope everyone is enjoying the spring as much as I am, even though my wardrobe isn’t ready for spring.

*I didn’t know about the good looking people phenomena, until two of my friends, who happen to be really good looking themselves, pointed this out to me last night at dinner. Now I just have to pull myself away from work so I can begin to enjoy this latest phenomena more.

Terminations (weekend of the 16–18).

After leaving work a little early on friday I decided I’d head south from Park City and go visit some friends in provo. I had a misconception that Provo was closer to Park City than Ogden, I was way wrong. — Provo could quite possibly be the farthest both geographically and ideologically from it. When I arrived in Provo I had a few hours to kill before planning to meet up with Kate and Neil so I went to the BYU museum of art to see their exhibit Beholding Salvation. The exhibit really brought in some nice prints and paintings and is worth checking out, but I was a little confused by the juvenility of many of the explanations accompanying the works of art, which seemed to be apologizing for the way Christian artist had depicted christ for centuries. Had my religion (Mormonism) developed a completely new set of theological rules, with regard to art, rules that force explanations and apologies to be attached to images about the Virgin Mary? This last summer I took a course covering the Renaissance in Florence, through that course I developed a greater love and respect for religious paintings, and as consequence I have come to believe that art needs to play a greater role in our societies beliefs. Just as the Bible and In my case the Book of Mormon are revered as Holy Scriptures I hold a believe that many of artist (including those of the renaissance) play(ed) an important part in sharing spiritual knowledge.

The following day Neil and I set out to film the first episode the saturday documentaries, which we didn’t finish or even really start. Instead we toured the Model homes in Day Break (Neil’s Thoughts) After a morning of touring houses we made our way to the latest exhibit at the UMFA I was excited to see this exhibit, but I as soon as we entered the exhibition room the security guard informed me that it was closing, From what I saw it looked really good and I’ll be back.

This post should have been three separate ones but I’m kind of liking the schizophrenia treatment of topics. Thanks for reading.

“Unequivocal” It is official with our apocalypse clock set at 11:55 Lets At Least Admit We Are To Blame for Global Warming

Global warming seems to be all the buzz these days with at least 4 articles everyday in my blog roll referencing our changing climate I’m left wondering how did this problem mature into the spot light of our media. (here is the latest report, it is really good and I don’t mean to be ungrateful for the information.) The data isn’t new we have know for years since I was elementary school, and have we done anything to stop it? DVDs and Books aren’t the answer here simply knowing about global warming isn’t going to make people change their ways or habits. The data is scary and maybe fear can be a motivating factor, but from my experience I’ve seen people react to scare tatics in two ways —opposite ways. Either they become so scared that they will never do anything that might put them in the situation again. Or they pretend like it didn’t happen and they weren’t scared. I however don’t agree with using this method to educate the public or make our world a better place. After all Eco Commerce has become a huge industry driving everything from automobile sales to graphic design. while the majority of peoples motives are positive I can’t help but think that all the talk about GW (global warming) has most seeing dollar signs, not the cost of a two degree warmer planet.