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Houston was weather-oriented. Besides the temperature being warm enough for shorts and tank tops, we had a lot of rain. Coming in on Wednesday, it looked like it had rained. Thursday was a mfing thunderstorm with the anger of god all afternoon. The main highway roads lacked proper draining pathways and they literally flooded. A nice reminder that hurricanes hit the area on a regular basis.

T sent me to Glassell School off of Montrose. Holy moley. The facilities for clay (which don’t seem emphasized on their website) are vast and awesome. The building rooms themselves, warehouse style, are laaarge large large with a few wheels lying around and plenty of canvas-mounted and wooden-top tables. They have three or four electric kilns inside. THEY HAVE AN OVAL. For whatever reason I’m a super fan of those type of kilns. Outside are three hummer-sized gas kilns. Giant gas kilns are a happy place for me. They fit about four full-sized adults to give you an idea of their size. Too bad their deadline for residency is in a few days.



We walked around Montrose and had ourselves some Thai. Omnom green curry with tofu. We drove to Baytown afterward – when we got caught in the monsoon – and then headed to the Galleria. Holy mall. Holy stores. Holy waterfall.

Houston is nice. It’s a city… similar to Chicago, less ego. Ego in the sense of OURCITYISAWESOME IDKWHYANYONEWOULDLIVEANYWHEREELSE WHYWOULDANYONENOTLOVETHISPLACE I’VENEVERLIVEDOUTSIDEOFILLINOISGOBEARS. Weird considering I equate Texas with big-mouthed big belt buckle wearing racist asshats. It seems like this city is integrated – there are a bunch of people of a bunch of different backgrounds coexisting and acknowledging other people are around. I felt like the other two places were rather white but more importantly, segregated. Less so here. Spanish billboards are right next to English billboards. Again, sort of freaky. I mean, it’s Texas! I didn’t see many cowboy hats. Plenty of cowboy boots!

It was warm! WARM. My knuckles have almost healed. And so concludes our tour of the southwest.

This ten minute video posted to wtf_nature was originally aired on Discovery Channel. Esref Armaga, a Turkish man born without eyes, is painting with his fingers. Basing his images off of what he’s “seen” with his hands, Armaga paints landscapes. Professor John Kennedy at Harvard University creams his undershorts about this guy. I’m not going to ruin the video for you so you can be surprised. They give him a test.

This dude gets perspective without ever having been able to see visual relationships. They scan his brains while he draws and his visual centers act as if he was seeing. He’s a pretty cool guy who wants people to focus on what he creates rather than how.

Five pictures were okayed by CBS Outdoor to be put on billboards. Suzanne Opton, in cooperation with curator Susan Reynolds, photographed nine soldiers laying on their sides. They look a little tired, maybe dazed. All of them were in between tours of duty.

Unfortunately, the images are not being posted in St. Paul/Minneapolis, as they are being labeled “too jarring.” CBS Outdoor Executive Vice President of Marketing Jodi Senese wrote to Opton along with the cancellation of the contract, saying the images may be seen as disrespectful to those in the service with the allusion to death in their gazes and might freak out passing motorists. That the pictures are “out of context” being outside of a gallery.

Errrr isn’t that the point?

Folks are pointing fingers, saying that the contract got canned in the Twin Cities due to the Republican Party convention. The images were originally put up in Denver in the beginning of August with the help of the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art. Three other cities are to be involved: Houston in Texas, Atlanta in Georgia, and Miami in Florida.

the site for the project
article at lensculture
article at marketwatch

Staring at the wall just got even more exciting!

Artsy fartsy Shi Yuan has decided that regular-type paint on walls is boring. I agree! As I have suffered through walls of beige and off-white all my life, this new product sounds like music to my eyes. Heat-sensitive paint can seemingly change color or appear from nowhere depending on how much heat is applied. It allows for something as simple as sunlight to affect the wall. If you are (un?)lucky enough to get direct sunlight in the room with the magic fun paint, you can tell what time of the day it is by how much of the paint has changed.

From brandon, the one with the weird stuff and is in dire need of an update. Holla back now to penisland. It’s a pen website. No. Really.

They’re by Arthur Gonzalez. My teacher has been telling us kiddles to look him up. Gonzalez is kind of sexy in his work, or he at least has it in the back of his brain while he’s creating. I’m really liking his female figures. The horny heads… idk.