2005-08-30

star tipsters unite :

. . . or star tipsters unit as I initially typed.

A tip to my friends over at Jalopnik.com has me dubbed a "[s]tar tipster and all ‘round badass. . ."

Frankly, we're touched. They like us. They really like us!

2005-08-29

conceptual art piece waiting to happen :

As an aspiring architect slash developer slash dictator, I had a huge collection of LEGO blocks. (It was so huge, partly, because I had a severe issue with destroying things. I could never take apart what I had created. I'll leave that and my anal sorting of all the blocks by specific color and keeping them in separate shoe boxes to my psychologist.)

Thanks to Core77.com for introducing me to the LEGO Factory where you can design anything you dream up with the LEGO Digital Designer app and then order the blocks to actually build the thing.

There is a conceptual installation piece in this. A master-planned town rendered in LEGO blocks?! A pile of coke?!

The mind boggles.

2005-08-12

Dan Savage is my hero :

I've never been able to get enough of Dan Savage. His sex column is brilliant. He edits one of the best alternative weeklies in the country, with some of the best art direction, The Stranger.

This week he's subbing for Andrew Sullivan. Read it. He's analyzing his support for the war in Iraq. It's something that many of us lefties have had to do over and over again. Opinions change. This doesn't mean we should stop having them.

2005-08-08

really? my fridge?

Although the title is a bit big brotherish, Photos of Your Fridge, is just the the sort of random documentation project that I love. (Link via core77.com)

the message :

Chad Upham, like others in the gay male community, has struggled with meth addiction.

He's also a Washington, DC-based graphic designer.

Graphic design is first and foremost about solving problems. Meth is his (and our) problem. So he's found a way to discuss this and get others to discuss this. Chad's site is here.

Be sure to also look at his design and photography work, as well. All of it is stunning. For different reasons, of course.

It's hard to make personal and political art. Very often all is lost. It becomes didatic and/or just bad art. It's something that I've been working on and struggling with in my own work since seroconverting in 1999 while an undergraduate art student.

More will come from me. When I reach a critical mass of information. And have to have a meaningful way to say it again. I still have all my old notebooks from profiles left at gay phone sites. Plus, every single bottle of pills that I've ever taken.

Chad's project is simple and clean. A dialogue starter. Like the best conceptual art. And like the best conceptuatl art, this is a conversation that needs to be started. Or continued.

The project only hints some of the underlying problems like sex addiction or the trouble gay men have with caring for each other. As the discussion unfolds, I suspect and hope these topics come up.