on grad school...on life really.

When I rise up
let me rise up joyful
like a bird.

When I fall
let me fall without regret
like a leaf.

-Wendell Berry

upcoming show

artist date night: Brian Dick

Brian Dick is a contemporary artist who lives and works in San Diego. Elly and I ran across his work in a gallery but couldn't spend too much time observing Dick's projects because Sydney's apartment was being engulfed by burnt bagel smoke... it's true. I had seen Dick's work before in the San Diego Museum of art and was intrigued by his whimsical look at self by way of ritual...sound familiar? His sculptures and performances are wonky and hard to talk about without using words like 'fun' or 'weird'. One critic had this to say about his work, and I thought it was a pretty interesting comment:

The work suffers though from too much open ended and fill-in-the-blank interpretations to be successful. Instead it relies on the inherent iconic and bas culture attraction of the materials used which is in sharp contrast to their real-life non-art meaning and existence. The piece is not subversive enough to be critical, not kitschy enough to be catchy and not humorous enough to be satirical – it’s just fun. Art can be fun – or a totem to one’s life.

Dick's work seems to be one of those telekinetic influences of mine: we are both looking at self-identity while being self-conscious about doing so. Check out Dick's video entitled How to Impersonate Myself



Dick's sculptures are haphazard and ritualistic...

"playful temporary sculptures (surrogates) created out of bedding-blankets, quilts and pillows-that serve double-duty documenting his daily ritual of making his bed differently each day ("Making My Bed")."

"Dick’s photographs documenting his daily ritual of making an artwork out of bedding"

Brian Dick's Nationwide Museum Mascot Project is one of projects I saw and the Museum in San Diego. Dick collected items from the community surrounding the Museum where his exhibition was held, and then created a mascot for the Museum.



One Free Corn Dog for the Price of Admission at San Diego Museum of Art
a museum 'mascot' created from secondhand materials found at local thrift stores ("Nationwide Museum Mascot Project")

The following work is from the show Elly and I saw. The show was weird; the immediate highlight of the show was a video of a woman making faces. The work has been bouncing around my head sense I left San Diego and thus, has grown on me. There was "a self-portrait of Brian standing in a field wearing a 10 foot air-filled balloon on his head with a giant caricature of him on it" in the show and the image itself I found rather unappealing. However, Dick's work sparked my fancy in that he seems to be capturing a sense of self through embodying characters of himself that he has created. This concept is something I attempt to do in my own performance work.


"by embodying the essence of his subject (Tim Robbins) through facial memory, or what he terms ‘muscle mimicry'. These and other works illustrate Dick's continuous dissection of the varying ways the self can be generated and represented. Each can be seen as an experiment-a playful, humorous excavation into his true identity that continues to unearth endless possibilities."

yay Brian Dick!