Oh Dog, you Sleuth!

I will be in Portland for the next week for my show, as well catching up with some of my favorite people and places and hopefully taking a lot of pictures.

I went to the Armory show on Saturday with my brother. It was the first time I’d ever gone, so it was cool to see work by a lot of my favorite artists, like the new unearthed Eggleston prints (above) at the Cheim & Read booth.

A Tom Sachs sculpture.

And there were lots of Alex Katz paintings everywhere. He’s one of my favorite painters, so it was a like a celebrity sighting every time I turned a corner and saw one. I didn’t know his work was so physically gigantic, either.

Lots of Ed Ruscha work was represented as well. Above is a detail from a wall of his photos. No giant word paintings, but I’ve seen those a million times at LACMA.

It’ll sound like “liking the gift shop more than the museum”, but one of my favorite things at the show was the Steidl/D.A.P. book booth, which was not so much a booth as a psychedelic spiraling display of all the books I want to desperately own. My heart skipped a beat when I saw the special edition of Ed Ruscha’s Then and Now. Aside from the Eggleston prints, this was the one item that would have motivated me to pull the fire alarm and try to steal in the hubbub.

Otherwise, it seemed like if a gallery wasn’t selling something insanely well-regarded/expensive, they took the path of just trying to make an impression, any impression, which is what made the show a lot more fun (though also a lot less substantial) than what you’d usually see from walking around Chelsea all afternoon.

I’ve never put much credence in astrology. But some of my closest advisors have really tried to change this way of thinking over the last several years. So whenever I come across a write-up for Geminis, I take a look. Yesterday, at a truly out of the way camera supply store on Broadway, I found the greatest write up for a Gemini I’d ever seen.

You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you because you are bisexual. However, you are inclined to expect too much for too little. This means you are cheap. Most Gemini people are known for committing incest.

I started scanning the other write ups and they were all this crazy. If anyone reading this got a voice mail message from me yesterday demanding, “What’s your sign!!?? Call me!!!!” This is why.

On Saturday night, the annual print auction is happening at the Newspace Center for Photography in Portland. This is the first year I’ve had a print in the auction, so I’m really excited about it.

There’s a lot of amazing work this time around. Check the catalog online here.

Also, the curators at the Humble Arts Foundation have included one of my photos in their most recent group show, which you can see here.

Kim, standing on the street where she lives. December, 2006.

Here’s my mom and dad, standing near their post-Katrina house in Burnside, LA, though mainly they’re living back in New Orleans, like the die-hards they are.

If anybody wants me, I’ll be in this cult.

Elliott Smith covering Chelsea Girls, via Jeremy.