GUN/STAIN

-Hell of a Town-

2011-12-20T22:49:00.000-08:00

I've been talking about my trip to New York for months now. I feel like it's going to become that one night stand that just stays with you afterwards. Gets under your skin, makes you wonder 'what if'. All that hokey shit. That's what New York is doing to me. Making me think about it.

It's an easy place to fall in love with. Old buildings, new ideas. Convergence. But you still have all your independence. You remain your own island even within the swarm.

That seems like a whole bunch of sweet word bullshit, and yeah, it probably is. But I keep thinking about it and I keep thinking about whether I could see myself there. I keep wondering if I can see myself anywhere, really. It's been a long time since I felt that there was a place that I could maybe suss out a place for myself in the world. It was nice to be reminded that it's something that, in the end, I really do want. Even if that place isn't New York. Even if that place isn't America. It's nice to know that I haven't fallen so far away from myself yet that I still have that desire.

It's also nice to have a picture or two to remember that feeling.

-Klassy with a K-

2011-09-26T22:03:00.001-07:00

In an effort to class up this joint, I've been buying a few small pieces of art. Books, prints, vinyl toys and the like. Small stuff, mostly. No major investments, unless you count the inevitable bajillions I will one day not make off my own work. Now, in an effort to avoid laundry for another half hour, I'm telling you all the freak about it.

Last month I finally managed to get up to New York and visit with my kindred JP, of Art Brut(e) fame. The epic adventures and mild heathenism experienced deserve their own post (and an offering of the photos I snapped while up there), but one of the many, many slices of awesome I got to see while I was up there was the Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty exhibit at The Met.

I was originally pretty bummed out because the show had been slatted to end two weeks before I'd even be in New York and I had to resign myself to missing out on seeing the icon's work in person and decided I'd just have to buy the book while up there and content myself with that.

But then, last minute, they extended the show and I made it in the last days. Five hours of standing in line later- no joke, we were really in line for that long. I finally got to see the work of one of my idols.

To some, fashion is clothes and nothing but. No matter how you present it to them, it'll always still be clothes. But there are still people who will deny comic books as legitimate literature and to them, I proffer my middle finger. I do the same to those who can look at the work of McQueen and do not see the art.

The exhibit I'll hold off on gushing about until the actual New York post, but it was amazing. It was one of those insane moments in your life where you feel an immensity before you and I'm so thankful that, not only was the show extended, but that my friends were willing to stand in line with me for over five hours. And wait patiently while I ran off to buy the companion book.

As far as owning art books, this is really one of my first for realsies one. However, it was quickly followed by receiving Kris Kuksi's Divination & Delusion from my brother as an (extremely) belated birthday present.

Kuksi is this insane Rococo style sculptor who has been making a lot of splashes lately. His pieces are compulsive and elaborate and, in truth, a little over whelming when you first encounter them.

The thing about art books is that they are stupid expensive. I mean, it makes sense, I know how much it costs to print high quality pictures, but how many artists are laying around with 100 bones they can afford to toss at a Francesca Woodman book? Not this diva.

However, a couple weeks back, I came across Ashley Wood's Sparrow collection. Each book features a different artist and, for about $12, offers you 50 pages of their work, often with preliminary sketches and the kind.

I've splurged on four so far, one by Ashley Wood himself, as well as Phil Hale, Glenn Barr and John Watkiss. They're small and concise. They don't waste anytime inventing meaning behind the work, they just present it to you and allow you to digest. It's something I can really appreciate.

The gallery I am showing at this month had several prints by Dave Perillo. Kitschy, retro and pop culture filled, I picked a couple up:

Look, while I can't say Flash without doing it in a singsong voice in homage to Freddy Mercury, I am also known by many a friend to be a wee bit Kraken obsessed. So, it was pretty much a "Holy crap" when I saw this little gem:

Tomorrow I will have to go buy some frames for these babies. And speaking of things I need to frame when ever the flying freak they get here, I ordered these from The Kills website:

I had to go through hell to order them, due to the complicated set up of their website's credit card service, but order them I did, friends. Order them I did. And I've been feverishly checking the tracking status ever since.

The last little tid bit from my art haul over the last several weeks was actually a vinyl toy I picked up today:

Brandt Peters has a blind box line out, and I'm a notorious sucker for those. I really like the little dude. I'll have to buy more.

And because it's freaking awesome:

-Lomo Llama-

2011-09-24T18:01:00.000-07:00

So, I accidentally bought a Diana. Oops.

The local comic shop I tend to slink into around my lunch break happened to be having a fairly massive mark down on all of their Lomography equiptment. Now, I already have a cute little red Holga courtesy of the super fantastic Petra, and it's a great little starter piece for someone looking to try out a medium format rig (and comparatively cheap, as well) But the Diana mini they had on the shelf was just so damned cute.

So yes, I bought the stupid thing. Oops.

Maybe now I'll be able to use that 8lbs of film I hauled back from Texas two years ago and promptly did nothing with.

-36 and Not Much Else-

2011-09-24T16:55:00.000-07:00

I love photography. I love the world it allows me to experience. I love the fact that it allows me to share that world with others. I love the view points it forces me to consider. I love the fact that it totally freaks out certain family members and causes them to ask my mother if I've happened to have "fallen in wit dem devil worshipers and such." I love it. Truly.

But in between all the high fiving demons and terrorizing the Faithful, I've become increasingly aware of the stigma of "The Photog" and thusly, become increasingly uncomfortable at times with owning the fact that eight years ago I was bit by the shutterbug and never looked back. There's that little glaze you see in people's eyes sometimes when you mention what you work in, and realize you somehow just lost credibility. You're suddenly Some Chick with a Camera and not the Ass Busting Artist you damned well know you are.

The validation photography has always sought as a medium of art is nothing new. From the beginning it's had to bob and weave the dismissive comments that it's a lesser and, somehow, easier art and when there isn't in-fighting between the digitals and the analogs, even now there is flack to dodge from the painters and sculptors and people who shit corn cobs into glass bowls for a living.

Now when anyone with a cell phone app or a pirated copy of PhotoShop can style themselves as a photographer, it makes that weird, squishy struggle for legitimacy that more strange. It's the same elitism the cute girl at GameStop gets whenever a guy asks her "Yeah, but are you really a gamer?" Instead it becomes, "Yeah, but are you really an artist?"

It's easy to press a shutter release. It's not easy to know your equipment well enough to truly command it. That said, I'd by lying and flying if I said some of my favorite pieces weren't complete accidents that I have positively no hope of ever recreating. Hell, even some of my favorite pieces by others were the result of cellphone captures, or came out of the dreaded Whimsy Land- Hipster- requisite Holga/Diana/Lomo/What the hells ever.

So whatever, be an indie fuck messing with your white balance. Be a hyper technician calibrating every mirror in your principle body to the point that you forget to bother with actual composition. Just have fun with what you're doing, damnit.

Me? I'm just happy my fan page has 36 members. And none of them are my mother.

-BFehhhh-

2011-07-17T20:39:00.000-07:00

So, I've made the big decision to not only return to school, but to switch into a full photography degree track. My family always knew me as an academic and as a science minded individual, so they're definitely having to adjust, but over all they seem happy for me.

Regardless, I'm happy for myself. When I was studying photography formally, for my minor, I just remember being so happy, having a full drive and actually sinking my teeth into what I was doing. I felt grounded for once in my life and I feel like I just need to reclaim a little of that old sentiment.

One of my oldest friends came down for the 4th of July weekend and we got a chance to talk about the program I'll be studying (she previously got her BFA from the same university) and what to be prepared for. We also had the chance for an impromptu photo shoot.

I don't know. For me, all of this is that little thread of fresh air in a stale room. I'm excited in a way I haven't genuinely felt in a very long time.

-Slap It Up, See What Sticks-

2011-05-24T06:09:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd give you a peek behind the scenes on a recent shoot with Matt. It was my first attempt at levitation pictures, which I know are fast becoming trite, but my addiction to Brooke Shaden's particular brand of photography has had it on the forethought for a long while now.

The final image:

Behind the scene:

It's a little rough, but it was a fun shoot, and as I said, my first attempt at this kind of manipulation. I'd definitely like to try more and specifically with a nude model. Oh, the ideas they are a-brewing.

I've also begun work on my submission to the Creep Cinema Show that's going to be in October. My working theme is possession at the moment and I have the first shoot under my belt, now I need to work on the model's body shoot and we'll be in business.

Here's a tease:

I have a pretty clear idea of where I want to go with this series so hopefully I'll be able to see it through to fruition.

But, I really need to remake my website. I really need to update my portfolio. Shit, I really need to do some shooting. There's a lot of I-really-need-to's going around at the moment, but for now, I have a new banner.

Also, I now have one of those fancy Facebook pages, so go ahead and check it out.

-The Black and White-

2011-05-05T12:09:00.000-07:00

I never used to buy into the idea of artists going through these rigid eras. I more than understood going through phases of heavy influence. But I never really got behind the idea of being focused to the point of excluding any variance of inspiration.

That was before I left for college. For the first time in my life I was completely cut off from anybody and anything that I knew and was comfortable with. I found myself moving into this massive shift away from a body of work that dealt almost exclusively with human form and into a period of time where I was both newly inspired and experimenting with this idea of black and white abstractism.

I don't know how to stress enough that I just didn't care for this form prior to this. So much of my previous work dealt with anonymity and my own ill-ease with human interaction that to try a new format was exciting for me.

It's funny to talk about this now, a year and a half after my time in Texas concluded but I think some of the distance from my feelings of that time needed to happen for me to look back at my old work and truly consider it. To actually find myself happy with it.

-Of Mock Turtle Soup and Other Unlikely Goings On-

2011-01-07T20:46:00.000-08:00

I've been a stranger in these parts for a while now. I'm trying to double my efforts and not let myself get so off track.

One part of that plan was to cut back on the video games that I use a stress killer, and put that time into some genuine effort on the photography front, but it's extremely difficult when the trailers to sequels of my favorite adolescent games get released.

American McGee's Alice is finally getting revisited in The Madness Returns due out from Spicy Horse this year. While some people were underwhelmed by McGee's 2008 effort, Grimm, this return to an old favorite looks like it has a lot to offer:

The original American McGee's Alice took the familiar and iconic childhood story of an odd child's odd journey and lent it a morbid bent which over ten years later, remain's one of my all time favorite games.

The distortion and psychosis of the surroundings and the character herself were one of the earliest proofs that video games are valid forms of art and story telling.

Video games have found themselves held under the same critiques comic books faced before writers and artists like Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore and James Jean found themselves on the scene and changed the way we treat the media, personally, I count the original Alice as one of those hallmark strides and am ridiculously excited to see its reappearance.

-tumblin-

2010-09-12T21:02:00.000-07:00

Since I didn't feel as if I had enough things to neglect, I went ahead and made myself a Tumblr: GunStain.

The idea is to use it as a public photo dump for ideas for my actual work. Keep me inspired. Or just a literal photo dump since I'm pretty all over the place to start with. But if you read this, you might as well add that.

-Reel-

2010-09-06T19:20:00.000-07:00

Neglect, my name is Sam. My life has been in a pretty severe disarray for several months now, so now I'm trying to make some renewed commitments to the things that mean the most to me. Of course, that includes my photography, but this new steam has also resurrected some old passions of mine, namely ballet.

With this in mind, it wouldn't shock anyone that the visual whore/balletomane in me jumped all over the trailer for Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan:

The film itself has elements of the doppleganger concept, Germanic folk myths, duality, and the dissolution of an individual's mentality. Aronofsky's previous work include Pi and the highly polished Requiem for a Dream, so I'm pretty much salivating for the general release of this one.

While on the topic of films with massive visual appeal, I should probably mention Lars von Trier's Antichrist:

While von Trier is a bit of a tiresome personality himself, his films have never failed to invoke strong reactions in me. In the final moment of the coda for Dancer in the Dark, I actually screamed and began sobbing. I've never had that reaction to a film before.

Antichrist has been an extremely polarizing film for a lot of people. It is a grotesque and beautiful movie with themes of violence, intense grief, the occult, sexuality and, again, Germanic folk myths, which seem to be a theme for me of late.

If for nothing else the film is absolutely soaked in lush visuals. I found the movie on Netflix on a rare day off and spent the next hour and a half with a dropped jaw. I ended up going to see Inception immediately after, but couldn't get into it, I was so distracted by what I'd previously seen. I'll go ahead and say it, Antichrist is my favorite example of photography direction in a film. I was absolutely staggered.

It's films like these that make me one day want to see what I can accomplish with photography if applied to moving image.

-SS-

2010-04-29T22:04:00.001-07:00

The very first photoshoot I ever attempted with artistic intent was in the social sciences building of my university. Back in 2003 the building was a utilitarian concrete structure and covered in creeping ivy. It was bizarre, even then.

Over the years I've gone back over and over again. Because, shit, it makes for a great background.

But part of me also wonders if its inclusion in so much of my body of work might be something I should pay attention to. Is it the aesthetic? Is it habit? Is it creative rut?

I've heard so many writers comment that the settings, environments and non-sentient elements of their stories become characters in and of themselves. You see it a lot in sci-fi. The Millennium Falcon, The Bebop, Serenity. They were all ships, but they held their own personalities, so much to the point that they were able to influence the other more traditional characters.

Maybe that's what this building has come to mean for me. A backdrop that influences the atmosphere of my shoots.

Or maybe it's just true what they say about Capricorns.

-Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus-

2010-03-14T21:58:00.000-07:00

-Dem Bones, Dem Bones-

2010-03-13T00:05:00.000-08:00

Like most former goth children, I retain a fascination with even the slightly macabre. I spent a good portion of my childhood running around reading books about hauntings and begging my poor momma for a Ouija board (a wish she never relented to).

One of the best and, admittedly, weirdest gifts an ex ever gave me was a genuine human skeleton. He bought it in secret from a medical training facility and presented it to me in a jumble and told me to have fun articulating it. Even now I have to admit, of all the men in my life, he's come the closest to figuring me out.

Even today I still collect skulls. Jewelry, ceramic pieces, toys. I even have a few scraps of dinosaur remains that my ex began teaching me fossil prep on. Little bits and pieces here and there scattered among the action figures and nail polish. Oh, hello, this was once a fox. This here was a thumb. So it goes, and all.

I don't know that I can completely qualify the hold that bones have on me. I started my education in forensic anthropology, but even before that there was a need to hold these things that are never meant to be exposed. It's nudity in the extreme, more intimate than any touch of skin could ever be.

Or maybe there's just a real reason I'm the black sheep of the family.

-Staring Down the Old Hag-

2009-11-20T09:10:00.000-08:00

I used to think there was a monster under the bed. I was fucking convinced.

My gran told me that it was because I didn't love Jesus enough, so I prayed and I slept with a dirty pink Precious Moments Bible, but at night it would still come. And it still does. Of course, now I'm an adult and know it's just hynagogia, but in those moments while it's happening, it's the most real thing in the world. You feel like your death has come to fetch you. And sometimes I'll still catch myself praying.

You hear it before you ever see it. You feel it on on your skin before you know it isn't real. Pops and hisses, croaking and clicks. It's weight against your side when the fingers start to drag down your arm. Salvia floods your mouth as the panic shoves its way into your chest. You choke on it your panic is so thick. But slowly your mobility creeps back into your limbs, you can finally sit up, have some water and forget that you're still afraid of the same things you were when you were six.

It's kind of fucked that this is something that's gone on since I was a child, but since the hynagogia began leaking into and inspiring my photography it's almost something I actively seek in myself. It's a case of poking the bear.

Momma might night have raised a fool but she did raise a glutton for punishment.

-Make Mine Marvel-

2009-09-08T21:36:00.000-07:00

Comic books? I damned well love them. Superheros, noir, fantasy. I read it all. If it has even the scent of Campbellian monomyth I'm all over it like stink on shit. Because I have the same over arching need to gravitate and immulate something larger than life itself as a twelve year old boy.

Again, it's that pull of narrative visuals. It crops up in my work as the over saturated colors, some of the compositions and the habit towards multipanels.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm really not anything but standard.

-1C 13:11-

2009-08-24T01:14:00.000-07:00

When I was a child, I'd sit in a sweaty church in itchy lace and pour through Revelations. I'd ignore the hour sermon and soak up as much imagery about Whores from Babylon, Lamb-Dragons and Snake Tongued Prophets as my child mind could absorb. At that age, it's the action that excites you. Same reason you'd rather watch Lethal Weapon and Rambo instead of The Seventh Seal.

However, the older I got, the more I was distracted by Corinthians and Mark, especially when I finally began to understand the extremisms some of my family took their Faith and began to defuse my own conflicts.

But even knowing that the degrees and strides some of those around me were taking were excessive, I never really understood just how far it went until I was much older, and it took a benign comment from a friend to nail it to the head for me.

Said friend was from the Eastern Bloc and grew up with religion being a major subtraction from her education, least to say the ferver of Holiness and Signs Following. She was positively fascinated by tent revivals and she couldn't quite understand the aggressive negativity I held for these elements of my upbringing that held over most of my late adolecence and very early twenties.

To her snake handling, speaking in tongues, submerged baptisms and faith healings were something novel and amazing and probably nothing truly real in her mind. They definitely were never the little quakes of terror they had been for me as a child. They were quaint cultural quirks.

And the funny thing is, that now, for some reason, I find myself defending it all. I just don't understand it. Maybe I just need to have it taken seriously. I guess I didn't like that she was going for the flare and theatrics of Pentecostalism. Just like I did as a little kid only paying attention to Revelations.

-Move-

2009-07-15T22:54:00.000-07:00

I've become obsessed with screen stills.

-Sympathy for Lady Dixie-

2009-07-12T15:56:00.000-07:00

I've already put it out there that the subject material of my work relies heavily on my childhood and the culture that framed it, but it would be sheer idiocy to claim that growing up Southern was the only damned thing that's ever come across my plate.

If my childhood supplied the content, Asia designed my aesthetic. Specifically, the violence and horror genres. The color palettes, the composition, the lighting- all of it I learned from Asian cinema. Especially from director's such as South Korea's Park Chan-wook.

My educational background is actually Asian studies and that foundation has become a heavy basis for my adult perspectives. The amount of influence it's had on me at this point could fill a month of Sundays, but for now, it'll have to be enough to give credit where credit is due.

-Piggy-

2009-07-05T22:24:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, a vegan friend of mine told me she believed that people only ate meat because the processed product was so far removed from its original form that people were able to distance themselves from the fact that meat was once an actual critter. It was an eloquent arguement, and one she's used to prove her point before. But there's a few flaws in it.

So, I described to her a pig pickin. Words can't describe how big her eyes got and I'm not all that certain I want to know what she thought of me after exposing that particular facet of Southern cuisine.

Pig pickins are pretty much exactly what they sound like. You spend the entire day roasting a hog and then you literally pick the meat right off the carcass. It's absolutely delicious and I have many wonderful memories of all the men gathered around, beers in hand directing the roasting and eventually looping off the head for us kids to play with (usually under the pretense to discover whether or not the head would sink if tossed in a canal. They float.).

These are social events in the extreme. The mommas making ambrosia and coleslaw, gossiping in the kitchen, the daddies only sort of keeping an eye on the kids outside, the kids who were mostly up trees or chasing the girls/squeamish with the pig's liberated head, and the requisite dog, inevitably named Shep, running around barking up a hazard.

Food and community are so closely tied in Southern culture that it's almost impossible to talk about one without mention of the other. I'm hard pressed to think of a conversation I've had with another Southerner that didn't include at least the presence of drinks, but usually heavy meal.

My vegan friend blanched at the mere description of this feasting tradition, and I'd hate to see her reaction if I actually brought her to one. Or maybe the sadist in me would love it. Either way, they're something I remember fondly and I look forward to the next time I get to go to one.

-Paper Cuts and Brain Freeze-

2009-07-04T20:36:00.000-07:00

I'm a reader. I go through books like elephants go through peanuts. My wallet hates me as a result and I've become a fixture at the little used bookstore downtown.

But over the years there's been a handfull of books that have held more sway over than me than most, to the point that I'd go on to say that they've actually altered the way I view the world and as a result, the way I create my work.

Six Books That Have Fucked With My World:

*Joan of Arc: In Her Own Words Willard Trask.

Given my other posts, one would probably expect me to include the New King James Bible in this list, but my relationship with outright religious texts is so complicated that I've over looked them for this. However, about ten years ago, my mother went out with some friends and during the course of the night she ended up at a bookstore and bought this book for me. It's the collection of depositions, testimonies, war journals and confessions of Joan of Arc during her trial by the English.

At 15 the stark language of the trial and the conviction of her responses floored me. More than anything, including the religious base of Joan, her conviction is what caught in my mind more than anything. Feral loyalty is something that has been a fixation for me and it was this book that came to mind years later when I studied the Hagakure.

*Preacher Garth Ennis:

I'm a rabid defender of the art of comic books and I couldn't give a rat's shit what you think, they're an amazing vehicle for literature. Preacher was the book that proved what I always knew to be true. The book follows the adventures of Jesse Custer, a possessed minister on a mission to confront the God who has abandoned his throne. If anything, the nine volumes of this series reaffirmed my own moralities (and lack there of) and personal conflicts.

*Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk

It seems trite for someone from my generation to list Fight Club as a mind altering novel. But there's a reason my peers flock to this Neo-Luddist piece- it speaks a shit ton of sense. And non-sense. And enough swagger to keep my interest. Dissatisfied, underwhelmed and angry, the book brought words to my mouth for the things I felt and the things that needed to be said.

*Thundering Silence: The Sutra on How to Better Catch a Snake Thich Nhat Hanh

I read this book at an extreme low point. I was an emotional shit stain and needed to be washed off. I found this skinny little book in a used book shop and took it's message of intellectual vanity to heart, panicked and, to the odd looks of my friends, got rid of all my books, ashamed of my own hubris. Of every book I've ever read, this is the one that provoked the most extreme and immediate of reactions. It also began my explorations of Buddhism and a dismantelment of certain hangups I'd been shredding myself on for years.

*The Mysterious Stranger Mark Twain

I'm a fan of Twain in general, but his unfinished novella was the one that bit the apple for me. Following an angel named Satan and some children he comes across. It examines a dialogue of accussation and existentialism that resulted in a PBS special that still spooks the shit out of me. It also contains one of the most important quotes I've come across.

*Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World Murakami Haruki

It's hard for me to pick a Murakami book that has influenced me the most, so I'll leave it as the one that started the obession. Hard-Boiled remains one of my all time favorites though. Surrealist and nonchalant, while somehow touching on reality at the same time. The complicated and dual plots pull in the competing narrative without destroying the flow. Something I hope for my photography.

-Happy America Day, Kids

2009-07-04T20:34:00.000-07:00

Now go blow up your fireworks.

-diptych, triptych, lick it-

2009-07-03T23:00:00.001-07:00

I'm surrounded by amazing artists. I have an entire slew of friends who are beyond the bounds of talented and are patient enough to deal with my piles of bullshit, all the while encouraging me along in my own bumbling with photography. And for years they've been trying to get me to learn how to explain my work.

If I'm serious about grad school (and that's the whole damned point of this blog) I need to start dissecting my stuff. There's something more than a little vain about the whole thing, but what else is art than reflections of your own glorifications?

Or some such shit.

One of the things that continues to crop up in a lot of my stuff is the use of diptychs. The use of multiple panels to reinforce a narrative has always appealed to me, and I love the idea of flow and series, but they also offer another advantage- display of complementary and competing dualities.

I make a lot of noise about juxtapositions and pluralism. I like the idea of the choir girl and the whore, murder for peace. I grew up brow beaten on the idea of accussation and salvation, the benediction and the shamed. Plus, I'm total shit at explaining myself on the spot, so the more a photo series can talk for itself, the less I'm gonna get my back up.

Of course, diptychs have a long history of Ecclesiastical use, so co-opting the concept seems a typical fit for me.

I am what I am, and what I am is a creature of habit.

-The Word and the Flesh-

2009-07-01T23:26:00.000-07:00

I have some pretty early and graphic memories of religion. White buildings, dirty around the skirts with cranberry pews inside and my gran's scripture calender (this was a day to day schedule of part of the Bible to read on what day, if you did it everyday, by the end of the year, you would have studied the entire Scripture).

I know religion is something that's meant to be a comfort for its adherents, and I also know that for many, that's exactly what it is. But for me it was a source of fear. I didn't understand the flaunting of the Christ on the cross and even at a young age there was something I found vulgar in its display. There was something vulgar in all the pluralisms I found within it and eventually I began to accuse.

Instead of finding solace in what was shown to me, I found fear. Fear in the shouting, fear in the flesh, fear in the words and fear in the threat. I remember my little brother and I holding each other's hands during Fellowship so we wouldn't have to touch anyone else. And I remember sleeping with my Bible every night because I was afraid not to.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to put to rest the aggressions and conflicts I feel when I look back at these things, but I do know that it continues to pull influence on me. I'm constantly distracted by religious art, religious literature and allegory. It continues to seep itself into my own artwork in varying ways. And maybe that's where I'll find the solace that escaped me as a child. Maybe that's where I'll find the peace that I seem to have missed out on.

-The Truth Will Bite Your Tongue-

2009-07-01T22:51:00.000-07:00

Thing about Southern families is that if you're the son, you've got it made in platinum, at least in some respects. There's a facet of the culture that just leans on the side of being overtly forgiving to the boys in the family. It's the odd side of Old World.

It's also something that, if you're a girl, you're just gonna have to get over. I've watched my brother get away with some massive doozies while I got tossed out of the house once for staying out late.

My momma more than believes in tough love, and as an adult, I find myself in full agreement with the concept and the zero tolerance policies my parents held for me ended up working to my benefit in the end. But there is a whole lot of cheek biting that goes on when I hear about some of my brother's escapes being relayed to me with indulgent tones. Especially since I know, had it been me, I would have had my ass tanned and racked. With good cause.

I can't say that I really understand the reasons why there is this attitude, other than to say I know it exists and I know it's not gonna change. There's a large part of me that's just given up on finding some kind of equal ground on that particular edge. But maybe it's made up for in other ways.

It's one of life's hypocrisies and I suppose it's just gonna have to remain one of those dualities that I keep coming up against as I continue with this project.

-These Shoes Were Made For Swagger-

2009-06-29T21:15:00.000-07:00

Small fact of life? I require a pair of blue suede 4.5 inch fuck me pumps in my life.

I can already hear myself running around shouting obnoxious Man From Memphis related shit.

When it came to what station to listen to in the car, my mother and I are down right combative. She's likes disco. I like...not disco. I like 90s rock. She thinks it sounds like horse shit. But there was always a compromise to be struck when it came to Elvis. I'm pretty sure the Powers That Be finally got sick of all our squawking that they ended up inventing the All Elvis XM channel.

That just about shut us both the fuck up and now all we yell about is volume.

2009-06-29T01:45:00.000-07:00

I say "spigot" and "buggy". I say "y'all" and "yonder". I open my mouth and you can tell what side of the Mason-Dixon I'm from. My momma tells a funny story about the honeymoon she had with my Miami bred father out in the Carolina mountains. They were at a restaurant and she had to translate what the waitress was saying. I'm nowhere near needing subtitles, but I know I've got a twang.

When I was younger, this actually got me jumped in a South Florida school by a couple of girls who assumed that my accent meant I was prejudice, neverminding the irony. So for a long time I went about hiding my natural voice and masking it with a general American accent, or as much of one as I could pull off. It was inconsistent at best and completely non-existent if my ire was up.

Now that I'm an adult and I live in Texas, the motives behind the cover up just don't hold the same sway over me and I've dropped the pretense for the most part. My vowels are drawn out and my consonants soft and nearly slurred. And every now and then I come across someone who'll flat out tell me they hate Southern accents. But I can't get too defensive, especially since I can't stand New England accents myself. Sounds like a damned pig grunting, you ask me.

-Sex and Your Silence-

2009-06-28T01:38:00.000-07:00

"Lady in the streets, whore in the sheets." This was my mother's decree on how to handle relationships. How she ended up with a foul mouthed cusser cum celibate for a daughter, I don't quite understand, but I'm sure it'll make for an interesting dissertation one day.

However, I think it's safe to argue that there's an element of sexuality to my photography. I can't escape it and I don't try to. But in the spirit of learning how to explain my work and explain myself, I'll try to qualify it.

The act of sex is so physically close to the kinds of hysteria and distortion of self that I've seen in religious houses that I think there's a large part of me that actively hunts down anything that calls those early images to mind. Sex and sexuality are such universal and accessible acts and concepts that they become an easy target to me. In my mind, they're also presented as something safer to address.

Growing up, sex wasn't a dirty word. It was a fact of life, something everyone does and will do, but please don't be an idiot, darling. There's no shame in the body, no shame in enjoying the body, but there's shame in messing up said body. Therein lies the sin.

Or maybe I'm just full of shit.

-Shutter, Trigger-

2009-06-28T00:11:00.000-07:00

Last year I was able to pick up a copy of Kyle Cassidy's Armerd America on the cheap. It's a photo essay detailing American gunowners around the country and their collected statements as to why they want guns in their lives.

It's been scientifically proven that I'm pro-gun. Seriously, there were dudes in lab coats and chemicals and words with very long syllables and everything.

But I do get asked sometimes why I'm so passionate about the 2nd Amendment, occasionally by people wanting to challenge and debunk me, but mostly by people who are just curious.

There's a list of reasons why I'm pro-gun, just as there's a list of reasons why I trained in martial arts. But I've never once been asked why I got involved in martial arts, though I can do just as much damage with my hands and feet as I can with a Glock.

Funny enough, many of the reasons for my interest in the two are parallel- discipline, self reliance, utilization of both body and mind for action, stress relief and the culture I come from. But most of all, as a reminder to myself of one of my father's earliest lessons: You are your own last line of defense.

-Aqua Lung-

2009-06-26T23:49:00.000-07:00

It hit fucking 106 in Texas today. Hotter than the Devil's asshole. The heat gets just as oppressive in Florida and we had humidity to add into it, but we also have the springs.

Jewel blue and cold enough to numb your lips, the springs were one of the little glories of my childhood. Sure, they're filled with gar, gators and rednecks, you're probably going to get in a shoving match with your cousins that'll end in your gran beating the shit out of the both of you and you might get lost out in the cypress, but as far as escaping heat, they were the were the cat's paw.

There's hundreds of these freckling Central and North Florida, but my family has always frequented Hart Springs the most. The springs were also where I picked up another fascination of mine- cave diving.

I hear people shit talk Florida a lot now that I don't live there and having grown up around this sort of thing, how could you find offense in such a place? There's nothing like it anywhere else I've found myself and they remainpart of my litmus test of beauty.

-Mother May I-

2009-06-25T22:46:00.000-07:00

My mother loathes cooking. Always has. That said, she's an amazing cook, something we are reminded of three times a year -Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas. She just couldn't give a rat's ass if you were starving, she hates cooking and that's the story of it.

Ergo, there were a lot of meals eaten out for us.

In Southern families we don't have dinner. We have supper and that happens at three, or at least it always has for me. Another fixed fact of these meals out with my mother was her reminding me to bring a book as we walked out the door. If one of us were in need of a new book, there was a trip to the store, no exceptions. Reason being, we don't talk over the meal.

We're glad for the company, but there's always been this element to our relationship where words would just muck the whole damned thing up.

There's a weird paradox to this, though. For as little as we talk, there is definitely an exact expectation for how my mother wants me to be, the person she needs me to be and it's walking razor wire sometimes trying to discern exactly who that is. I must be feminine, but never weak. I must be intelligent, but never gloat. I must be shrewd, but never a shrew.

I. Must. Never. Let. Them. See. Me. Flinch.

I know when I fail in that ideal, I shame not only her opinion of me, but of her opinion of how good a mother she is.

The idea kills. I have amazing parents. They're hard-nosed and hard working and they've broken their fingers and backs over the years providing for their kids. Their respect is bottom line to me. My biggest fear is being their fuck up.

-The Good, The Bad, and The Deeply Obsessed-

2009-06-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

My mother calls me my father's daughter. And I am. As a kid, he was god to me. This infallible myth of a man that knew exactly what the world was about and the gatekeeper to all Knowledge To Be Known. Anything he liked, was worthy of being liked by me.

This is the logic of daddy's girls.

25 years later, I'm still one. And my father remains one of the most intelligent men I've ever met, and the one I respect more than anyone. And 25 years later, I still find myself following suit with his habits. One of which is a love of westerns.

Specifically, Eastwood. And even more to the point, The Man With No Name.

The character borrowed heavily from another obsession of mine, Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo and probably went a long way as inspiration for another favorite character, Wolverine. Gruff, silent and skewed in his sense morality, Blondie was a stock character that filled in blanks.

One day, when I make it big, I'm gonna buy a revolver with an ivory rattlesnake on the grip. And that's gonna be that.

-Way Down in the Hole-

2009-06-24T19:37:00.001-07:00

One of the things you'll have to admit to yourself when you get involved with art is that you're gonna beg, steal and cheat off of everything you come into contact with. What I mean by this is that everything you're exposed to will find its way into whatever you do, however you do it. Just fucking accept the fact and run with it.

Trust me, you'll be less constipated when you do.

One of the more direct influences on what I do is music. I listen to it while I shoot and I listen to it while I edit. Keeps me in the same mindset throughout the process that way. Sets a mood, looses the time. 9 times of 10 that music is gonna be Tom Waits.

I'm an absolute heathen for the man.

His music just makes me feel sexy. It makes me swagger. And who wouldn't want that?

-Black Snake Moan-

2009-06-23T21:44:00.000-07:00

I've heard a couple people dismiss this movie as exploitative trash. While I could argue a mile against that, I could also make a case for the fact that a body's culture can be just as exploitative to them as anything else they're likely to run across.

Black Snake Moan is a Marner style redemption story backed with a soundtrack that, years after buying it, still lives in my truck. Rae's aggressive sexuality and Lazarus' personal rejections and hardlined morality provide a narrative that carries you through both characters' stuggles with what they've become and what brought them there.

And of course, I ate that shit up.

At my house, the dvd holds a coveted place on my shelf between my Sealab collection and 90's Era Val Kilmer movies so when partner in crime, Art Brut(e)'s own JP, linked me to a still of Ricci right while I was wanting to post something, I had a duh moment. This is why she remains the Eric to my Pam.

I think a lot of people might want to shelve this film as being an exaggeration of its setting, but I don't think it's so far off the base, at least in my own experiences. It's hard to defend where you come from, especially in the face of the negative and down right fucked. But I do get my back up when I hear people judge the people and not the deed. I don't know, I'm not very talented at explaining myself, but that's probably the reason I hide behind a camera these days.

-Of Signs Following-

2009-06-22T21:18:00.000-07:00

To say that my relationship with religion is strained is almost a dismissal. There is a lot that I was exposed to at a certain age and in a certain manner that, instead of having a comforting presence in my life, became something that unsettled me. It's something that, in my adult life, has left me angry.

It's no secret that I fell away from the Church and the religion of my youth, and in a lot of ways I just kept on falling. For good and for bad. But as I go further with this project and as I continue to force myself to examine the foundations of my childhood I have to fess up to the fact that the things I turned away from still have an effect on who I am and will be later on. It's also making realize that there's a lot of shit down there that I just don't know how to stare down.

And I don't know where that's going to leave me.

-Gone to Delta-

2009-06-21T22:21:00.000-07:00

They say there are only two true American art forms- comic books and the blues. And my friends, I am nothing if not an American. Two of my favorite examples of these are found in Ennis' Preacher series and the music of Bukka White.

Both deal with religion, sexuality, repression, the nature of violence, depression and the roles of men and women and both do so against a backdrop of the South and the sometimes lop-sided morality it embraces.

-My Baby Shot Me Down-

2009-06-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

Like every good Southerner, when I was 10 years old, I had a Daisy. I even had my very own tin of bright pink pellets for it that I had to ask my uncle to get off the shelf for me every time I wanted some target practice.

Eventually, I graduated up to my Big Girl Gun, a Browning, that I had to learn how to clean, lube, take apart and reassemble. Learned idioms like "Revolver for accuracy, automatic for reliability." It's still my favorite gun, but it all started with that Daisy fifteen years ago.

To this day, I'm still an avid gun enthusiast and I turn into a real bitch when I hear people pop off anti-gun stuff when they don't know word one about the things or the culture and discipline that surrounds them.

Just call me a stereotype.

-Sunshine Stain-

2009-06-20T19:46:00.000-07:00

When most people think of Florida they probably think of Miami, Jimmy Buffet songs and college football. This is a Florida that I'm familiar with, myself, but you go much further north of West Palm or west of Dade and it's an entirely different story. It's the South. Capital S.

And it's my mother's culture that dominated my childhood and directs my adult life in ways I'm only now begining to figure out. And it's that culture that's bleeding all over my own work.

Guns, grits, and God. Hoorah.

-Rapture in the DFW-

2009-06-19T22:46:00.000-07:00

When I was very young, my grandmother had this painting in her house that scared the ever-loving shit out of my six year old self. It was also my first introduction to the Christian concpet of Rapture.

The picture itself is violent. It's a scene just outside of Downtown Dallas with planes crashing into buildings, cars flipping and dead bodies strewn across fields with souls rising up to towards an open-armed Christ. It's a wrathful and disturbing contridiction to the image of ecstasy the word more typically brings to mind.

Now that I live in Dallas, myself, I've been hearing that people sell this piece of religious kitsch at the flea markets here, so maybe one of these days I'll pick one up.

-Bad Things With You-

2009-06-18T19:06:00.000-07:00

I'm sure by this point my friends are ready to string me up by my heels and let me hang, they're so sick of hearing about it, but I've completely fallen for HBO's True Blood. It continues an idiotic vampire obsession of mine that dates back to a childhood spent watching Kindred the Embraced, an adolescence occupied mimicking Buffy, and a college career watching a Brit and a Kiwi fake my accent.

But more than that, it does a fantastic job pointing fingers at the dualities of Southern culture, I believe that's its biggest attractant to me. I would have gone ga-ga for the damned show anyway, but I love it that much more for the brilliant opening titles Digital Kitchen put together for it:

Full opening:

-Shot From the Hip-

2009-06-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

Somewhere in between digging around for another stick of gum and YouTubing the wonderful trainwreck that is CNTM, I made up my mind that I want grad school. To pull that little stunt off, I'm going to have to develop my portfolio.

The point of this blog is to help keep me on track and keep me inspired. I have no idea what all I'll be posting, but you're welcome to watch. Plus, I'm a god damned delight, so you might as well.