Thanks Frederick Barthelme!

One interesting facet that has come from this blog is learning that other artists do indeed google search themselves and visit websites such as this (Whew! I am not alone in this potentially narcissistic activity). Recently, my student Shannon posted an entry about her trip to Niagara citing Alec Soth as an inspiration and he sent her an email in response (by the way Alec, if you happen to read this, thanks for introducing me to the concept of "Googlegangers" - a term I've used often in the past couple years). In addition, Frederick Barthelme found our blog and declared the Spiral Jelly sentiments as "sweet" which made my day somewhere in the middle of Utah when Nancy and I first learned about it.

Nancy made a video about peanut butter and Spiral Jetty - an ode to Frederick Barthelme in a sense. There aren't any stills from it as of yet so here is the first thing that came up in a google search when typing in "peanut butter spoonful." I cannot quite bring myself to interact with peanut butter on any level after making that video so maybe one day in the far future, I will replace this one with an image of my own.



The mere fact that people I admire and refer to on this blog may actually find themselves here one day, interests me greatly. So just in case one particular artist does not, I've decided to write him and inform him that he inspired us on multiple occasions over the past few weeks. Why not publish one more "artist fan letter" after the James Turrell fiasco? This road trip has taught me that I don't have much to lose so I should go for it...

Soon.... Dear Ed Ruscha,


(not Perry AKA Ed Rowlands as Ed Ruscha).