This is Art. Happening.

That is the question! So I watched Religulous, a documentary where Bill Maher examines and questions different organized religion. Then 2 days later, I see news on the percentage of Christians dropping to 75% in America. I wanted to reflect upon this social movement with the ever changing face of America.

I posted a request for profile photos from Facebook and Myspace asking people to contribute their photos to my project. I took all the pictures and laid them on top of another until they all blended together to create a picture which represents America. Video here.

I drew the 75% of the picture with Jesus fish representing the Christians, and the other 25% of non Christians with Darwin fish. Of course, the two are NOT mutually exclusive. However, there is the Fish war all over America. I thought it would be appropriate to use these symbols for my project.

The end image turned out rather young because when you overlap pictures, you can’t quite capture any wrinkles and facial lines with all stacked on top of each other. See here.

I couldn’t pass on the opportunity of the news on the Japanese Finance Minster reportedly drunk at a G7meeting. In order to make the video realistic, I was actually drunk while making this piece. I don’t condone this behavior or would I ever recommend anyone make art drunk. I prepped the piece ahead of time knowing I wasn’t going to reach my full potential making art drunk. Check the full video here.

I’ve never been drunk during the day. It made me do things I wouldn’t normally do. Or would I? The statements I made in the video, some while slurring, are all related to the Japanese economy. In light of the recent downturn in the global economy, a lot of it can apply to just anywhere including the US.

The project was going really smoothly, so I thought. Well, at least the cutting part. I had to clue it together to make a box so I can fill it up with sake. It took a few gluing attempts to get the foam boards to finally stick together without the glue eating away the foam. I then took it to the hospital to X-ray. This was the hardest part. I filled it up with sake but it kept leaking out, everywhere. I had to keep refilling it with sake really fast to get the X-rays. It eventually worked, but all that sake…
Here’s what’s left of the sake.

This news came just in time when I thought news was dwindling down. I really thought it needed more attention than it got. There are a lot of people who still aren’t aware of the Khmer Rouge genocide and the astonishing fact that it took 30years to get a move on the trial of the genocide. Check out the video here.

I thought it would hard to get a costume this time of the year but found a local costume shop that has everything. When the owner asked what I was going to use the skeleton costume for, I should’ve said “what do you mean for what? It’s just a regular Wed. for me.” I traced around the skeleton as it dropped dead on the canvas repeatedly.

I did something a little different with this project, not that any of the projects are the same. The process of making this one was more abstract in that it was hard to tell where I was going with the piece. I’m pleased with how it turned out. Check out the final image here.

I wanted to do this project(click here for video) because there have been so few heroes in the news as of late. With the increasing intensity of the economy worsening, it’s nice to be able to do a story on an uplifting, heroic event. I didn’t want to make the piece all serious and heroic like it has been everywhere else. I thought it was very fitting to use a bird as a medium since the birds “made” a hero out of the pilot. I have to say, this was a really fun piece to do.

I wanted to buy a dead duck or goose with head, feet and feathers on. I called a few butcher shops, and quickly realized that I was not going to find a duck with feathers unless I hit a farm with live birds. I only wanted to use a dead duck that was already available cuz I certainly had no desire to kill any ducks specifically for this project. I ended up finding a dead duck at a local grocery store with head and feet attached. Eww!

I was pretty grossed out at the idea of using meat as a medium, and it was pretty gross here and there. However, it was really fun because the texture of the skin of the duck made the piece really interesting. It went by pretty fast, only taking a couple of hours to do the entire project. The hard part was finding the right music. I ended up spending hours sifting through music. I didn’t want to exaggerate the grossness with music, but something that brings out the fun part of the project. After all, I am throwing a duck at a canvas. I ended up with a blue grass band that submitted music for me to use in my videos. It was a match! It was smooth sailing after that.

I went to LA to film the Dr. Phil show last week. It was different than what I expected. And again, they made me sign a confidentiality agreement so I can’t say much. I came home from filming the Dr Phil show with the stomach flu. It was the worst flight ever. I was in and out of the bathroom at least 10times. It took 3 long days to recover, and I debated about doing the Obama piece as I only have two days till the inauguration…I went for it.

Even though everyone is coming out with something on Obama, I still decided to make this piece. I didn’t want to make pieces relating to the news in 2009 and not include this historical event. As we make this transition, they said too much hope and dreams, not enough practical stuff. But the thing is you don’t get change without hopes and dreams. So I asked people to submit their hopes and dreams of what they would like to see Obama accomplish during his presidency. I used these hopes and dreams to make a piece of Obama deep in his thoughts. I also captured a few people saying their hopes and dreams on camera to make the video more interesting. It would be cool to look back after his term to see how many of these have been realized.

I started the project on Sunday. I mostly just ran around to capture all the hopes and dreams on camera, and getting everything set up. By the time I started the piece, I realized I had no working markers, so had to wait till the next day. It had gone a lot slower than I thought. For some reason, this was worse for my hands than A Moment. Also since I gained weight for the commercial shoot, I ended up crushing the bucket I was sitting on. The longest 14hrs on a Monday! I finally got done around 1am only to go home to editing, blogging and uploading.

It took absolutely forever to download all the videos onto my desktop. Once I finished doing that, I realized the picture I took didn’t have good enough lighting, so I had to go back to retake photos. By then, I was exhausted to say the least…I thought maybe at some point my luck on this project would turn around. It never happened. It was just one thing after another, and by 7am, I was too tired to function so I uploaded what I had then realizing I needed to make a few changes. I went to bed instead and slept through the inauguration! Oh well. Here it is, finally! Click here for the final photo.

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After looking at the war on nipples last week, politics came front and center. It dawned on me; these are the final days of the Bush Presidency. How to summarize his presidency became the goal and I decided to bring it home in poetic form. I took a stab at the rhyme and then recruited my brother to make it happen. The poem is more serious than the projects I typically take on. The effects of his presidency are no laughing matter.

As serious as the piece is, I had to figure out an entertaining way to execute the piece. As I was remembering events that linked to Bush, I couldn’t help think of the moment when the Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at Bush. I definitely didn’t want to pass on the opportunity of including that in the video. I got 6 pairs of different types of shoes, shoes for kids, men, women, young and elderly. His presidency obviously affected everyone. I especially liked the symbol of the kid’s shoes. They can’t defend themselves so it was great to throw shoes for them as so many kids are affected by us borrowing against their future and winging it through global warming.

Using the same idea I did last year in the baseball video, I planned out the Bush piece accordingly. For this project, planning is everything, literally! To be exact, 80% of this project is planning, about two days.

One particular challenge was the protective film I used to protect the canvas while I threw the shoes, was very thin and hard to work with from the beginning to the end. After planning, it only took about 2 more hours to make the video while I made the piece.

I have to say, I really enjoyed throwing shoes to make Bush. 8 long years, summed up in 2 short hours! Damn, I wished I had more shoes….

Watch the video!

One question I have is, will anyone recognize why I said Saddam the way I did?

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As everyone is focusing so much on the war on Gaza, I picked a light comical war to focus on instead, the war on Nipples. As some of you may have heard, facebook deems showing of nips obscene including breastfeeding. Meanwhile, men’s nipples aren’t a problem. So I decided to post a picture of me made entirely with nipples. We will watch the fate of the photo on facebook as facebook removes photos arbitrarily.

In the beginning of the video, I was sitting at McDonald’s talking to myself.

People looked at me strangely as I videotaped myself lifting my shirt up to show my nips, yea…The project started like my influence video for obvious reasons, I needed to take my shirt off for lots of pictures of my nipples. I printed out the pictures in all different sizes, large nipples, small nipples, me pinching my nipples, NIPPLES NIPPLES NIPPLES, until hundreds of my nipples were starring back at me.

I really wanted to make sure people see nipples no matter how small the picture. I then spent 4hours planning where the pictures would go. The rest of the project was a lot like the Green River Killer piece, cutting and gluing the pictures together for what seems to be endless amount of hours, to create an image of myself as my profile photo on facebook.

Check to see if the picture is still up on Facebook.