friday 29 february 2008
cafe forant
449 w 51st st. (between 9th & 10th ave), nyc
6pm-8pm
you can see chess from sundown until 10pm
wednesday, 27 february 2008
thursday, 28 february 2008
friday, 29 february 2008
but friday is the only time to get free hot chocolate, coffee, lea's food . . .
hope to see you there
sometimes people want to know a little bit about what they're looking at and sometimes i try to explain it. hopefully this helps you understand how chess came into being.
http://www.eriksanner.com/2008_for_blog/080223_chess_about.pdf
tonight finished installing chess in its most public location yet. that meant drawing the grid for the projection in chalk and charcoal. 
here's the result.
cafe forant
449 51st street (between 9th and 10th avenue)
from sundown until 10pm
sunday 24 february 2008 - friday 29 february 2008
reception inside the cafe tuesday 26 february 2008, 6pm-8pm
free and open to the public
tuesday might be rainy, that might wash away the drawing, if so will repeat friday, february 29th, 6-8pm, reception.
i hope you can come and see it.
all of them, one [result] [byproduct] of the creation of a collaborative new media installation. hope you enjoy.
http://www.eriksanner.com/2008_for_blog/080221_chess_paintings.pdf
saturday night good friend and new neighbor kevin had a housewarming party. after taking down chess from breeze, i set it up in his place. then, late at night, started projecting across the street. not sure whose idea that was, but there were a few of us who agreed it would be "cool" to try. here's what that looked like from the sidewalk (chess is visible at top-left).
think the projector can get a little brighter, but sometimes i get nervous and forget such a simple thing. anyway, several people had suggested approaching alvin ailey, but i don't know anyone there and wondered who to call. also frankly i was getting quite discouraged after all my cold-calls and packets and emails weren't yielding venues. also had been suggested that might be more fruitful abandoning the approaching-random-people-with-attractive-spaces in favor of approaching-people-i-already-have-some-sort-of-relationship-with and see if i can figure out how to make the space work, or how to fit the space. (more fun, too, approaching people who are already supportive of my art, and actually want to see it, or help if they can, whole different feeling.) now it turns out that rachel (who i know through kevin) has a friend who ?heads the extension division? there. anyway, it's something worth pursuing, one of the spaces i hope to show chess at after february 29th, when it comes down from cafe forant.
speaking of cafe forant, there's now a little dvd player and a digital picture frame, both showing more images/footage from the park sessions, so you get a bit of a better feeling for how the project progressed, from collaborative paintings into a new media piece of computer-controlled video-of-painting.
only visible when it's dark out. hope to have opening reception next tuesday, february 26th, 6pm-8pm, still tentative.
you can see it now but it will look better when the weather clears up - will draw black and white squares with chalk and charcoal on the sidewalk. so next tuesday, assuming this all gets solidified, will be the time to check it out.
cafe forant
north side of 51st street between 9th and 10th ave
also planning to have dvd of all the paintings playing, and digital picture frame of the event, another of all the games. hope will be beautiful.
one customer already said was.
from first half of february. most of what i've been doing is trying to solidify a venue to share chess, which is a lot of emailing and calling people and meeting up for coffee or whatever, not the most imageful activities. but there are other chunks of life too.
got a phone call from good friend catherine who said her good friend fanny was looking for used paint brushes, tubes of paint, etc. so i sold a bunch of nearly-empty tubes, bent pigment-encrusted brushes, my palette, etc. it all got put on a movie set, one of the characters is an artist. the cash will cover a new palette and some other supplies i needed. i don't know what the movie is called, but my tools (not my work) will be in a movie at some point. just an odd thing that happened. frankly i'm excited to go to pearl and get some new brushes.
here's what i sold.
drawing class, we went to st patrick's cathedral. i really need practice. it has been a long time since i've done any drawing from life.
at guenter's opening, the photographer and his model.
lots and lots of battles with the pinwheel. so much chess rendering (not for the piece itself, which is done, but i decided i also want to show just the footage of the painting on another screen, and also pictures of the painting and location on another screen), always afraid to do screen captures during rendering, don't want to upset my machine. however even just wrapping up documentation, there were skirmishes.
set up chess in my studio again, to try to get a cleaner work sample, to show people on dvd, what it looks like, anybody who doesn't get to see the actual piece. maybe i'll do some sort of project, ok not sure about this but maybe at some point, involving just the documentation, the new piece would be a sort of conglomerate of a bunch of other projects. maybe not, every time i think about going back to old work or combining existing things, i realize there are more projects which are newer i'd rather initiate, instead of exploring the past. onward. but sometimes i really like looking at those sample images, a different kind of satisfaction then you get in the presence of the work itself.
drawing class in grand central station.
and chess is no longer at breeze, i took it down yesterday. but i thought it looked good from the inside.
you can see some of the chess documentation i've been pulling together, it's huge though, might take a while to download.
http://www.eriksanner.com/2008_for_blog/080214_chess_paintings.pdf
anyway here you get the gist. that's the only chess painting (of 64) which doesn't use any paint, it's a collage of polaroids steph and i made in the park, wrapping up day three, waiting for the paintings to dry. we each had a polaroid camera. first she took a picture of the board, then put it on the board. as it developed i took a picture of the picture of the board on the board. we each had a pair of scissors and bunch of stuff - i don't know what it's called - some kind of super-strong archival adhesive, photography people are familiar with it. anyway, so we kept taking pictures of this collage as it was growing, and incorporating them into the collage, this is the result. memorable experience. (months ago, not february, just finally got all the pieces in order, and photographed them, to share.)
breeze (thai-french fusion restaurant)
661 9th avenue (between 45th and 46th streets)
the owner says if no customers complain by mid-week then she'll keep it up for a while, and then i'll plan an opening/closing party etc. worst case, i'll keep looking for another venue.
but if you want to see this piece right now, you can totally do that.
hope you enjoy it.
putting the chess paintings in order, making sure i have all the video included in the piece, a still photo of each one, the right names and numbers. has been occupying most of my art-time lately, everything else on hold while i get chess wrapped up (work complete) and share it.
some details if you're curious.
http://www.eriksanner.com/2008_blog_for/080130_game_tracker.xls
by the way, really enjoying listening to some of the conversations (which won't be included in the piece). was telling sarah schmerler about ray kurzweil and transhumanism and how i believe we're all going to become the borg, she stopped painting at some point, got to see a physical reaction other than facial expressions.
final painting, six children together, i sound like beavis and butthead's teacher, "ok kids, do whatever you want, ok?"
starting another class tomorrow, drawing interior public spaces in new york city, that might not be the exact title, but you get it, a drawing class. not so long ago was talking to katharine about why. big part of my answer was "i don't know but i want to." anyway, that perspective drawing class last year, today it changed what i'm doing and how i do it. i've done a lot of projects involving rectangles or grids of some sort, usually painting, going all the way back, almost, as long as i've been painting - certainly in the nineties in tokyo there were a lot of grids in my work. i didn't see them that way, to me they were rectangles. anyway, never once did i use a ruler or a straightedge or a pencil or block anything out. as a painter i've always just stuck to paint, not drawing underneath, not lining out or outlining or going around edges much if at all, painting should come from the center so i'll start everything from the center, that has pretty much been my attitude.
so, that color study piece i'm about to embark on, was thinking about how precise i wanted it to match up, how it might be more interesting but definitely more work later on to just haphazardly paint a square, another square, another square, and see if they come out uniform, or try to see how uniform i can get them - anyway that's what i'd usually do. but i want to see that piece. and i don't want to spend days jiggering little movie clips in flash or whatever software it ends up being and matching them up. it might look more "organic" or you might see my "hand" a bit more, but basically i want this to be a functional color study and i'd rather realize it than futz around either painting over and over to get the grid right or coaxing video clips into specifically picky locations. so, i got out my square with the straight edge, and the tape measure, and i drew a grid.
which never would have happened if i hadn't taken that other class. this piece is going to be "flat" and perspective is not going to be a consideration, but drawing a grid or using a square or a straight edge or measuring, none of those things would ever had occurred to me if i hadn't taken that class. didn't have the equipment anyway, was resisted getting it until i realized i wasn't getting any feedback from the teacher without it. so it's already had an effect on how i work, how i think, on my practice.
i didn't really know why i was taking that class either. there were a few vague ideas, i don't want to get into them because i want to go to sleep, but - never would have thought i'd end up painting inside lines. so even if i'm not using what i learned (perspective) i'm using what i learned (tools, precision, efficiency).
think thai/french fusion restaurant breeze on 9th avenue is going to let me show chess for a couple weeks in february, should know for certain this week, that's a great development on the sharing-chess-with-the-community front
regarding the call-of-the-paint, put some more grey on the base of color study first half last night, no real reason to do that, except i could hear it
