Marbles in March

John Frusciante in my pool, originally uploaded by Sarah Sitkin.

Another beautiful piece by photographer Sarah Sitkin. She used to live in Knoxville, but now works out west. Too bad for us, but she's making great work. I recommend her flickr stuff.

Here's another lovely one:

Royksopp

Remind Me from Röyksopp on Vimeo.


This music video is a nice rabbit-hole animation of the modern systems we use. It makes me sad.


Royksopp is a Norwegian electronic music duo who make melodic and smart songs. I don't know if they qualify as trip-hop, but their videos tend to be a little trippy and beautiful. Here's another one I like:



What Else Is There? from Röyksopp on Vimeo.

William Action

This is my friend William. He is smart, funny, and obviously in touch with the collective unconscious. I ask you to consider making your own Your Name Here Action video and post it in response to his.

Der Rouska Schoeka

My clever peers, Sara Marie Miller and Veronica Siehl, recently put on a beautiful puppet show at the Birdhouse in Knoxville. They "reinterpreted" the folk story of the Red Shoes using hand cut shadow puppets, prints, and their own language.

They will be having a closing performance and potluck on April 25th at the Birdhouse, 800 N. 4th Ave., if you'd like to see it. There will be shows at 8 pm and 10 pm with a suggested donation of $5 or a potluck dish.

Gardens and Bikes

That second workshop is actually on May 10th and not April 10th. Hope you all can make it.

The Sublime

dive from katie on Vimeo.

Remember when the Olympics were on? Weeeeeeeeee....that was fun. I've never cared so much about sports for which I thought I cared so little. Like track and field, swimming, and diving.

This is short snippet of a TV screen showing a woman diving. Most striking to me was the beauty of the camera motion: the way it tracks along with her body and the bars of the diving structure flash down. And then there is banal bar chatter in the background.

I can hardly wait for summer.

In Review

Hello there friends,

It's snowing in Knoxville today and we left sheets and tarps over seedlings in the garden in a vain attempt to spare them from freezing.

In other news, I had a show recently at Fluorescent Gallery here in Knoxville. It was called "The Economy of the Amateur" and centered around issues of labor, value, and my own fantasies of neo-agrarian life.

Gallery visitors were invited to felt a sweetgum ball (the spiney seed casing of the sweetgum tree), which then served as a unit of currency. Those in possession of feltballs could use them to purchase bottles of walnut ink, screen printed packages of seeds, biodegradable planters, and/or screen printed and flocked bags of compost. Some people (the romantics, I think) liked the feltballs as precious object and kept theirs rather than spending them. Other visitors sat for hours amassing enough "wealth" to purchase several of each product.

Also on display were drawings by local artists made using my homemade walnut ink. I solicited artists via craigslist, email, and face-to-face to trade me one 12" x 12" drawing for a 4 oz. bottle of ink. Throughout the show, gallery visitors sat at a drawing table (equipped with nibs, brushes, and ink) and made more drawings with the ink and added them to the wall.

In addition to the smaller drawings and the aforementioned products, I hung four large drawings. Each featured an archetypal figure engaged in absurd parodies of agrarian labor. I've been told they are somewhat sinister and ambiguous, but I think they're funny. The figures are harvesting, digging, wandering and noodling (which is the word for catching a catfish using your hand as bait).

For those of you who couldn't make it, I'm posting photos to my flickr page here.

behind the ball

The Economy of the Amateur went up and went well, I believe. Now to laundry, tending to relationships, and uploading photos and video. Here, as a means of pushing the blog along, is a short video of the 102 class messing around. Play is important, yes?

Of course, yes.


Anastasia from katie on Vimeo.