the coffee philosopher

Posted on January 9, 2015January 7, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

Artist Statements

This is really just an excuse to show this awesome thing that the fine time wasters at Stumbleupon landed me on: Artybollocks Generator.

It instantly creates a marvelously meaningless, yet still maybe possible real sounding artistic statement to describe your… well, whatever it is that you are creating.

Create Your Own Instant Artist Statement

For your own edification, here’s mine:

My work explores the relationship between Critical theory and urban spaces.

With influences as diverse as Blake and L Ron Hubbard, new variations are crafted from both opaque and transparent layers.

Ever since I was a student I have been fascinated by the traditional understanding of the human condition. What starts out as contemplation soon becomes finessed into a hegemony of greed, leaving only a sense of failing and the dawn of a new order.

As temporal derivatives become transformed through studious and academic practice, the viewer is left with an epitaph for the edges of our era.

Posted on January 8, 2015December 29, 2014 by the coffee philosopher

Big Tomato

Big Tomato is a pizza place in Des Moines. They sell whole pies, but I know them primarily as a ‘by the slice’ kind o’ place. Rather like an Iowa version of Pizza Mart.

They had a sheet of paper by the window where you ordered with a list of numbers and after each number, the toppings. Random things like an Irish themed peas and potatoes pizza or alfredo sauce, olives, pimentos and gorgonzola. You ordered by number and if you did not or attempted to get off the menu, you were publicly shamed.

And you didn’t want to be shamed, because if it was 2 am and you were slightly tipsy and under thirty (which I was, barely, in those days), the punk rock girl on the other side of that window was the beautiful thing you had ever seen and you did not want to be on her bad side because, hey, you know, maybe you had a shot, you know? I mean, not really, but you didn’t want to rule it out by not ordering properly, did you? I thought not.

Posted on January 7, 2015December 29, 2014 by the coffee philosopher

Ensemble Galilei At The National Gallery

I used to regularly attend the Sunday concerts at the National Gallery of Art. Usually they were some small group – a quartet or a duo (piano and voice; flute and guitar; harpsichord and violin; etc) – playing a mixture of older classics and some modern composers or off the beaten track.

This one was lured me in because it mentioned Marais, who was a great seventeenth and eighteenth century composer for the viol de gamba. But though they played a piece by Marais (and it was, of course, fantastic), they mostly played Scottish and northern European pieces and the combination was… eclectic. Frankly, I unsatisfied. I didn’t cohere for me. The mixture of Shetland reels, Greensleeves, and French composers from the Baroque was like a poorly curated exhibit, especially because little effort was made to explain to us (the audience) how the pieces made up a single program, beyond the simply fact of just being played together.

On the other hand, they have a nice exhibit of El Greco paintings. Mostly, they are paintings from the National Gallery’s permanent collection and some paintings from nearby museums (Dumbarton Oaks in DC and the Walter in Baltimore). Nothing spectacular, curation wise, but it’s just nice to see a bunch in one place.