Place/Displace wins 3rd place at the county fair!

...I mean Minnetrista's Art of the Land Show.



Actually, it is great because the prize money paid for the matboard, foam core, and glass to frame the work. We were a little disappointed that oil paintings of barns beat us but we thought long and hard about what we would concede first and second prize to and decided on this...


A partially full box of Amoré chocolates (Huckleberry, margarita, chili lime, and coconut joy truffles) = the best in the world!

Hannah and I then decided to Search for the Impossible today... It featured trying to return to summer just one more time this year with a bike ride and Stewart's sodas on the Cardinal Greenway.




We road all the way to Gaston, Indiana - 20 miles round trip. It was a lot of fun until I had a mishap riding my bike into a fence.



The Search for the Impossible was moderately successful. Next up on the horizon... more prints and the diorama. Nancy has videos in the works too!

Sunrise over Spiral Jetty

from the Getty Museum.

Richard Serra's "Shift"

Earthworks threatened by development is a popular theme in the art world news of late. Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes talks about Serra's seminal early work here.



Photo by Shawn Micallef.

Today's Output

Round 1 (this afternoon)



Round 2 (after eating dinner and mowing the lawn in the dark)

Place/Displace with Hannah Barnes

still formulating an artist statement but at long last, one aspect of this project & collaboration is complete!








Photographing the boxes in the lighting studio.


The entry (love those green walls).


Installing the exhibition after acceptance.

The Ruscha Letter, Written, Folded and Delivered by hand

Thinking about Sugimoto (as I often tend to do)

Hiroshi Sugimoto's Lightning Fields

From Sugimoto's website:

"The word electricity is thought to derive from the ancient Greek elektron, meaning “amber.” When subject to friction, materials such as amber and fur produce an effect that we now know as static electricity. Related phenomena were studied in the eighteenth century, most notably by Benjamin Franklin. To test his theory that lightning is electricity, in 1752 Franklin flew a kite in a thunderstorm. He conducted the experiment at great danger to himself; in fact, other researchers were electrocuted while conducting similar experiments. He not only proved his hypothesis, but also that electricity has positive and negative charges.

In 1831, Michael Faraday’s formulation of the law of electromagnetic induction led to the invention of electric generators and transformers, which dramatically changed the quality of human life. Far less well-known is that Faraday’s colleague, William Fox Talbot, was the father of calotype photography. Fox Talbot’s momentous discovery of the photosensitive properties of silver alloys led to the development of positive-negative photographic imaging. The idea of observing the effects of electrical discharges on photographic dry plates reflects my desire to re-create the major discoveries of these scientific pioneers in the darkroom and verify them with my own eyes."

It's currently on view at one of my favorite galleries in San Francisco.

Nesting Box collaboration with Hannah hereafter known as Place/Displace (ode to Smithson's Site/Nonsite)

Hannah and I have been slaving away this past week making frames for the six nesting box photographs. They will be displayed as an installation: six photographs accompanied by six boxes. We are submitting this entry to Minnetrista's Art of the Land Show this Friday. More photographs coming soon.


Lightning Field nesting box printed at 12"x18", soon to be framed at 18"x24".


Hannah and Chet in a heated discussion about measurements and math.


Queen of the Woodshop and Chet with glasses.


Transparent white stained frames after coat number 3.

Bruce Nauman & "Leave the Land Alone"

Skywriting sculpture conceived in 1969 and executed on Sept. 12, 2009 over the Arroyo Seco, Pasadena, CA



In this weekend's LA Times.

"Grotto" by Nancy Douthey

"Grotto" by Nancy Douthey, Summerfest Performance, Houston, Texas ... August 11, 2009 inspired by the all the disinfecting that occurred on the road trip the month before.

Roads vs. Road Trips

A asked me if I wanted anything he could bring back from Indy this weekend and my only response was "Life. Bring back life." "That's impossible," he replied because the moment one turns off I-69, it withers away. Sometimes I feel like I live off the Convicts' Road or the Exile's Road Ian Frazier writes about below. I am always searching for that "happy ending" and this weekend it remains only in the photographs I am printing from this summer. I am dreaming of another road trip as this holiday weekend nears its half way point and I am laying low waiting for what lies on the horizon next weekend... Chicago.

"In America, we love roads. To be 'on the road' is to be happy and alive and free. Whatever lonesomeness the road implies is also a blankness that soon will be filled with possibility. A road leading to the horizon almost always signifies a hopeful vista for Americans. 'Riding off into the sunset' has always been our happy ending. But I could find no happy-ending vista here, only the opposite.... Longing and melancholy seemed to have worked themselves into the very soil; the old road and the land around it seemed downcast, as if they'd had their feelings hurt by how much the people passing by did not want to be here." Ian Frazier From Part I: Travels in Siberia


Len Jenshel's Death Valley, 1990

The remaining nesting boxes photographed by Hannah

Two each from Double Negative, Roden Crater, Lightning Field and Amarillo Ramp.

Special Delivery

on Ed Ruscha's door.

From Venice Beach to Muncie

Nancy hand delivered my letter to Ed Ruscha's mailbox today (photographs forthcoming). While she is basking in the California sun, I am in a windowless computer lab printing the first two photographs from our road trip. Here are some bad i-phone photographs from the last three hours.


It's the Bonneville Salt Flats and Fake Doughnut Diptych (the bad light giving the opposite impression of Southern California).


hmmm.... 30"x20" vs. 22"x15"?


A rough idea...