2 days until my solo show opens at Gallery 138.

So holy christ on a stick!
Tomorrow is the big day!

Spent the morning finishing hanging the show. Looks like a million bucks by 1943 standards!
Video bouncing all over video, glass refracting  at curious angles, collage, montage, the different combinations. Dynamite.

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Ocularpation install photo, video on oil painting.
Instanity!

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Also met with some collectors this morning and chit chatted.
They are from the south and quite nice. We spoke of projecting videos on buildings and other such large feats. I am naturally drawn to people who start speaking about giant things. Something in the shear size that turns me on in an instant. The massive scale of projects is something that grabs the attention and commands a large audience. Something so seductive in that… like candy before junkies and children…

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Ocularpation install photo, video on oil painting.

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4 days until my solo show opens at Gallery 138.

Installation is rolling right along.

Spent the majority of the day finalizing the details the show. All the paintings are hung and the video is mostly fine tuned. I’m loving how it’s all coming together. It’s sincerely like a dream that is materializing before my eyes.
Amazing and misty, the shroud is being pulled back slowly but surely.

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Kissing Youth, Kissing Youth

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Large chunk of the day was spent trying to locate a mylar sheet that is over 64″ wide, so that I could project a video on to it. Did not go well. It appears that larger than 54″ is impossible to find in NYC. And I mean I looked!

From art stores, to gift wrapping wholesalers, to balloon makers, to backdrop designers, to professional photography suppliers, interior designers, everybody and their damn uncle…. Zilch. Looks like the installation isn’t going to be happening the way that I thought. No cave of mirrors.

Oh well, I still like the look of it, sans reflective shit.

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Autumn Moon (detail)

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Wild Eyed Dog at the feet of a Former Dominatrix

5 Days until my solo show opens at Gallery 138.

Big day!

Day 1 of the installation.
Got there late, but of course…
Is there any other way?

Showed up with 2 huge rolls of canvas and wood frames and BAM… threw down, right into the fire.
Installers were there in a hurry and wanted to know where everything goes, PRONTO.
Ladders out, pliers and screwguns, ready to rock.
Brookie and I walked around the place, evaluating, placing, scheming, grand-conceptualizing, cramming, jamming, mindmelding, you name it, ’twas done.

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Layout is fairly solid for how things are going to be set up.

4 videos and 6 oil paintings. Perhaps a few photos that I printed out as well. Not sure about how well the couch photos will go with the over all look, but we’ll get to the bottom of that tomorrow morning, bright and early.

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As it all comes together it blows my mind that such an abstract concept talked about for months, ideas, thoughts, conversations, dawdles, and doodles become a concrete environment right before my eyes. Watching the shape emerge from the mist has got to top the list for awesome experiences (well… other than hanging out with my drop dead gorgeous girlfriend…)

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Someone else actually restretched my canvas!
May god give you eternal head in heaven!

6 days until my solo show opens at Gallery 138.

So amidst the the shuffle of coast to coast operations, I have slipped behind in the bloggety blog. My dearest apologies reader. I know it takes the piss out of the operation when I’m not consistent, but what to offer you in the way of an explanation other than this photo…

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Yes… yes indeed.

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Other than that, the shipping process from West to East I think went alright. The rolling into the tube was a damn bit scary, but it appears that they made it. I checked it on the plane with me and then waited at my new favorite place in the whole damn world for an hour and a half, JFK airport!

What a true delight that finely oiled machine of precision is to navigate and to relax in!
From friendly and helpful staff, to conveniently located facilities, to clear instructions, to a clean and well light atmosphere…. ahhhhhh…. JFK.

I’d place you even above Heathrow!

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I was supposed to put together the frames and restretch canvas today, but no key was mailed to my lovely girlfriend’s house, so there is no way for me to get into the gallery… so… I’m off to a little Easter festivity instead. Hahahahaha!

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10 days until my solo show opens at Gallery 138.

So the fucking day is upon me!

New York City here I fucking come!

Tomorrow afternoon, 12:40pm to be exact, my ass is on a plane and I’m out of California for the rest of March. I am soooooooo fucking excited!
Am I going to stop using exclamation points or what!!

The paintings are all packed up, frames rolled and boxed, underwear, shirts, shoes, presents for the stunningly beautiful Ashley Hanes, technology, cameras, check, check, check. Ret-set-set. All the ducks in a row.

Now I’m nervous as hell…
and trying to go to sleep.
Jesus christ this is  going to be a rough 10 days.

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Bacon style mug shots

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Can’t wait to see this girl!
Seriously, I can not fucking wait to see her.

EEEEKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!

Photo by Ashley Hanes

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this is what happens when I don’t get to see that girl of mine enough.

11 days until my solo show opens at Gallery 138.

Finally stripped the beasts bare….

Oh! Finer days have I seen!!!

So sad to see my old compatriots torn loose from their moorings and laid to the cold ground, like petty trash amongst the hoi polloi. You deserve better dearest paintings, but for now, you’ll sleep in a tight roll, nestled amongst your lower companions of convenience, dear Mr. Bubblewrap and Mrs. Packingtape and their wicked son Lt. Mailingtube.
Beware of the cursed Mailingtube, not to be trusted…

Peekaboo motherfucker

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So perhaps I overreacted yesterday in regards to certain aforementioned earrings. I’m discovering that my mental and emotional health leave much to be desired these days.
When the fuck did I become such a whiny Whinney?

Egad… I hope these most recent outbursts of wanton tantrum are not what is to be expected as I get old old older?

Say it ain’t so!

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Shearing of the carcass

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The emasculated piece

12 days until my solo show opens at Gallery 138.

3 days until I fly out to New York. My shit is totally unraveling. A million emails to send people. Still have to unstretch the damn canvases which I was supposed to do today, but it’s just not looking like it’s going to happen tonight.
Perhaps I’ll do one. Just one. Get the fucking ball rolling.

It’s just such a defeating process.
You spend so damn long building the stretcher, stretching the canvas, making sure it’s tight, gessoing it, gessoing it again, and again, then you go about painting the damn thing and then you’ve got to take it all apart again. Such a step backward from a seemingly finished process. Makes me want to pile them in the middle of the street and set them on fire instead of fucking with them anymore.

Maybe then I could video it and put that in the show instead.
Hmmmmmm….. thinking about it….. hmmmm…..

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Nocturnal Gas Station Lazarus

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Got a text message from my girlfriend today that totally bummed the shit out of me.
I sent her a package with all kinds of the presents for her (as well as some flyers that she requested, so that she could “whore me out” as she put it). Then today, just as I am buying her a fucking Kara Walker book because she likes Kara Walker and I’m all excited to give it to her, I get a text from her saying,

“just opened the ugliest earrings ever, thank you baby”

How fucking ungrateful is that!?
She later apologized and said that she thought the earrings were trashy joke earrings!
Total bullshit. Now I know they weren’t the nicest earrings in the world, but they certainly weren’t the most hideous thing on the street either. Makes me want to go give the Walker book to some bum on 6th and Market, they’d be more appreciative than her.
Kind of took the wind out of my sails for coming to stay with her.

In addition, I’m getting a fucking cold sore.

What the fuck god!?

What if the cold sore looked like this?

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That way motherfucker.

13 days until my solo show opens at Gallery 138.

With the clock ticking down, I am beginning to go into a weird lackadaisical overdrive. A chicken missing it’s feet and flopping about on it’s side, spurting blood here and there, will, I suppose, get something done, whether it’s considered productive or not, is another matter entirely. Not to say that I’m missing my feet, but I am most certainly a chicken.

I had a dream last night that my girlfriend and I were running Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. We were doing horribly. Fucking up left and right, we had a team of scraggly college volunteers planning everything and I spent most of the dream thinking,
“Fuck! This isn’t going to work! We’re going to lose”

My girlfriend thinks that I’m having anxiety about the show, worrying that no one will show up, that it will be a flop, etc.

My guess is that she, as usual, is right.
Dead right.
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New idea for video series:
Convulsions, seizures, fits

Here are some preliminary sketches.

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14 days until my solo show opens at Gallery 138.

Brookie and I talked about having stills available for the show.
Tough to decide which ones to print.
We chose to not print up photo stills from the videos, but rather to choose a theme from past photos that I’ve taken.

What, you may ask dear reader, was the theme?

Excellent question.
‘Twas the couch.

Yes, the mighty sofa it self.

Look below and taste the comfort.

Hamburg riots protesting G8 summit

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Serena Pacagnella at the Venice Biennale

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Some dipshit flying
Photo by Ashley Hanes

15 days until my solo show opens at Gallery 138.

Passing out more flyers today. Love people’s reaction when I hand it to them.
It’s typically split in to two categories:

1)
Oh My God Zefrey!!! That’s fucking hilarious! Jesus christ, where in the fuck did you do that?!

(and then ensues a conversation about the corner of Market St.& Montgomery St. at 7:45am in San Francisco, with the weather being 42 degrees and then little glances towards my genitalia and smirking…)

2)
They take it, look at me, shake their head, fold it, and put it in their back pocket and ask me how I’m doing.

(and then ensues a conversation about how I’m doing really great, thanks for asking, no, really things are going super, I’m in love, yes, art is going well, moving to New York, and you?, oh really, that’s great, wonderful, I really like that taqueria too, I can’t believe she’s pregnant, ad nauseum)

Ocularpation (still life with creamer)

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Speaking on the phone for 5 hours with the most beautiful woman in the world. My ear gets sore, but I never run out of things to tell her, never tire of listening to her voice. It’s amazing, it truly is. I never knew that I could care this much about what someone else said or did. Telling stories for hours, discussing things from angles that I never dreamed were possible. Truly communicating with someone. Fucking blows my mind. Tons of fear and weirdness getting exposed to the light of scrutiny and vanishing like mice when you flip the lights in the kitchen on.

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Chinese Old Year

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Indeed…