In case you were worried, while flying or taking the subway. http://www.doihavepigflu.com/

Thanks for the link, Tester.

Steal from the best….

Caught this deep in the outer borough of Queens on my way to work. Make Phase proud. Still an inspiration to the young bucks 30 years later. THAT IS INFLUENCE. Hope this brings back the Roman Numerals. Graf Trend for 2010.

And the master himself of the Arabic-Roman Hybrid Numeral Dos.

Last photo by Matt Weber

Bill McRight in one of those internet “friends” I only know through flickr (God bless flickr), but I’ve been watching him and his work is pretty dope. Side note, all you kids be careful of sharing too much on the net. Use some common sense. Pervs and Police abound.

His printmaking is pretty dope. But his latest sculpture pieces got me hyped enough to reach out to him. When asked about them Bill said, “there is not really a concept to these. it’s just a lot of fun to pick up trash and fashion weapons out of it. I am going to be showing an even larger group of these later this summer at a shop here in Philly, stay tuned for details.”

When I hear about that show I’ll post it here, because functional art is twice as fun, and art with a violent function may be the funnest.

His illustrations and prints kill it too. Nice work Bill.

Originally an essay/book by John Berger, “Ways of Seeing” was produced by the BBC in 1972. Similar to Marshall McLuhan’s approach, Berger’s stress is on the analysis of art in context of its history and cutlural values. He argues that it is impossible to separate even a still life from the values of its time and place. This is almost a definition of Post-Modern values and world view as applied to art. And although I am of very different political beliefs (he is an unapologetic marxist/humanist)  I can’t help but admit that he has a very well put and thoroughly thought argument pertaining to the way we speak or mis-speak about reality, from observation, to shared experience. I also find his observations about the nature of objectification (most specifically in Episode 2-part 5-The Female Nude) particularly interesting. Although I assume that our ideas as to “why” diverge greatly due to his Marxist beliefs.

A good majority of this is most valuable when you have the time to really watch it. Its not nearly as enlightening listening to it while at work for instance, because so much of the program is about visual analysis. The book is ok, but the video was really excellent. A good example of one medium being better suited than another. If only contemporary free-market television produced such quality programming. Here’s looking to you, future “webtv.” I still believe its possible.