Time to Recharge: Aptera, room renovation, and stuff

We just hit a deadline at Graft and got full approval for our efforts!  Though there was doubt early on about portions of it hitting on budget, it is clear now that it is rolling out how we've always maintained.  Great news because that clears the way for design development.

Anyways, spent my morning off beating back black widows and restoring order to my shed - with some great discoveries.  We've got a table saw!  Maybe I can set up shop and start to build some stuff for the backyard.

Meanwhile, I came across this car:

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Yeah yeah woooo!

My friend Julie D. got married this past weekend, so it was up to Maine to see her off to a new phase of life, stuff in some lobstah, see the brother's new digs at Bowdoin, and generally take in crisp air and fall colors.

I hate the process of flying, but really enjoy the sensation of it.  When you're there, looking down from 35,000 ft, you realize the insignificance and triviality of yourself and all the things you do, and the intense wonder of everything spilled out below.  I saw the most amazing thunderstorm on my way back - literally half an hour of light ricocheting through canyons of clouds.  And yet everyone else was watching Ocean's Thirteen.

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All in good fun...

You know how a kickball feels straight to the gut?  How you have to take a moment for the pain to subside and to catch your breath as you're doubled over watching some ants carry some crumbs across the pavement?  But you can't complain cause it's all in good fun and you gotta throw the ball to second base before you screw up the game.

Yeah.  sweet.   So... I've finally caught my breath... I think.

This summer has been wild: I graduated with my Master's, I started work at an awesome firm (GRAFT), saw my little brother's high school graduation, participated in my sister's wedding, submitted final spreads for our graduate thesis publication in a spanish magazine, moved from my home of 3 years, hosted my Danish cousins visit in Los Angeles, attended two more weddings of dear friends, met some amazing people, and made some lemonade.

Incredible.

And as much as I've been longing for a respite, I feel I'm sometimes uncomfortable with nothing to do.  I need some lessons in chill.

Oh!

and something I did not do this summer is wash my car.  I actually brought it in to get washed ac ouple days ago, and they wouldn't do it!  Their reason?  Too dirty.  TOO DIRTY!!!!???  Yeah, isn't that the point!  Why else would I bring it in?  brand spanking clean so i can throw money at your face!?

Hooray!

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Congrats to my sister and my new brother-in-law

Benny and Katherine, you make a wonderful and perfect couple! Best luck in your life together!


Will post pics soon!

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The end of an Era.

So now marks nearly a week since our opening at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions occurred for Superficial Superglow, and it has taken nearly that long to recover.

I have many previous blog entries about the process, but I have yet to pool my thoughts on the project comprehensively.  To be honest, I am left with a bittersweet taste in my mouth... in so many ways the project could have been so much more and at the same time so much less.

So I will give myself a little more time to stew.  In the meantime, enjoy some pictures and get out to the installation, Eviscerated Glowworm and Fizzle, before it closes on June 18th, which is still largely a success.

6522 Hollywood Boulevard at LACE Gallery and The Paul Gleason Theater, open 10-6, and weekend evenings, respectively.

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Infectious Optimism!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

So i'm in a seminar on Dutch design with Michael Speaks. Oh man! The guy is aptly named. He'll talk and talk, weaving the hours into minutes, and only come up for air at the two hour break. And the ideas are literally spilling out of him, shouldering and throwing sly left-hooks to get out of his mind - to the point where he is constantly interrupting himself. Fascinating! Inspiring! We must get him into Mayne's studio for a nuanced critique from his angle.   speaking of which, midterm model images:

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Los Angeles' disease

Heads up.  This just rang so true.  Read it friends... especially if you think a street is for driving on.

What's a street and why you should care.

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Uninhabitated Space

As we automate our spaces, a certain phenomenon is emerging.  That is, we are designing and building great feats of engineering that, in effect, we will never see.

I suppose this is nothing new:  Storm tunnels, vast aqueducts, steam tunnels and various urban systems are already servicing the city sans inhabitation.  But this new level of service and automation eclipses them all.

Behold: the automated parking structure. 20 floors high and entirely run on software.... our new Cathedrals to what matters most:

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Second Fermentation

The rough set before finishing and wiring:

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Disaster Renewal

Remarkable pictures are emerging from the collapse of the overpass coming off the Bay Bridge in east bay.  My old haunt from the San Francisco days lies literally ten long blocks from there.

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27 hours a day.

All day every day.

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moving to 581 c

First read this:

New Planet Found!

Great. I know what you're all thinking. Once we fuck this earth up enough, we can all pack our bags for home sweet 581 c.

Meanwhile, earnings for the top hedge fund managers were announced in the New York Times.  James Simons earned 1.7 BILLION last year.

If he were a country, James Simons' GDP would earn a ranking of 151 among all the countries in the world, right after Mongolia and before Lesotho + 41 other countries.

What does all this have to do with each other, you may wonder?

One can see how the discovery of an inhabitable planet might become the ultimate destination.  The be all end all of Dubai's and Vegases.

Take a weekend 120 trillion miles away, and bask under the dim light of the dwarf star.

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old news

This evening I flipped through some ole photos and found this gem:

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Vigilante Urbanism.

Frustration from spinning our wheels in studio.  How much does the academic process have to interfere with real ideas?  So Thom told us to anchor our ideas in one main diagram that pins Charmatin as a counterbalance and continuation of the Castellana. Basically, all our more nuanced and textured ideas about time and the spatial ramifications of speed need to be pinned to a dumb conventional idea parading as the core of our project.

Whether or not we do this, is not really the point.  It's only whether or not we explain it this way in the final review.

All this, seems incredibly disingenuous and counterproductive.  Is there really no other way to order ideas other than boiling off the flavor into incredibly banal diagrams?

And also... since the way we order data is never neutral, why discount the imagination so much?  Can't formal issues start to inflect broader ideas about the site with something new or unexpected?

Undoubtedly, diagrams are helpful, but they're generally boring, and are very often taken as unbiased information.

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free and wicked

How many ways can you break yourself before the healing stops?  Right now I mean physically, but the question extends to different realms.  I got the xray of my kneecap back today.

Diagnosis: normal.

Am I normal?

I remember faintly my progression through elementary and middle school absolutely convinced that normal was a bad thing.... that it meant you hadn't tried hard enough to be unique.  Then highschool happened and i was a bland stick in the mud.  Then college and now grad school, and I would like to think that i am back on my path from my formative years, though i suppose i am not so extreme as some of my friends.

Which isn't to say that I don't like normal people.  They're perfectly all right. I suppose.  Just, meh, kind of boring.

So I think it kind of sucks that we only get one life.  There's so much to do, so many different people you could be, so many lives to understand.

As a child I wanted to be a farmer.

I wanted to be a teacher.

I wanted to be a mom.

I wanted to be an astronaut.

I wanted to be a rockstar.

I wanted to be a cat.

I wanted to be an actress.

I wanted to be an architect.

I wanted to be all manner of things, and now i have no idea what, exactly, I want to be.  Except that travel must be part of the plan.

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