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This is great. Christian Patterson posted a link to this HOW TO a few days ago. It goes step by step and shows you how to hack a CVS one-time-use video camera.
Presenting the all new grad school scorecard. I thought that since I’m now in the running for an Ivy League program, I should make the scorecard a little more mature.
I got a call from the esteemed Thomas Roma from Columbia this afternoon, and he asked me for an interview the third week of March. He also asked me what all the laughing in the background was about. I was sitting on the quad with my jackass friends and not expecting his call. Oops.
I interviewed at ICP over the weekend, and it was a really great experience. They had a bunch of their first year grad students there to kind of chat with us as we waited to go in, and they were all really friendly, they all wanted to see my portfolio and they all said nice things about it. It was sort of the same vibe in the actual interview, which was great. Nayland Blake, David Deichter and Nancy Davenport. They were pretty welcoming and warm, and it seemed like a very close-knit place.
So here is the updated Scorecard. And I also want to send a shout out to all the British authors who seem to find their way to this blog. It’s a funny pattern that seems to be emerging, but a terrific one. Thanks, girls.
Today, I received a letter from the Yale School of Art that said this:
Dear Gregory,
Happy Birthday! And fuck you.
Sincerely,
Yale
That’s not really what it said. But looks like I won’t be going there in the fall just the same. So it’s time to introduce the Greg Wasserstrom/Blog Graduate School Scorecard:
I just learned to use Illustrator, obviously. As always, I’ll keep you updated, whoever you are.
I’m writing this later paper on Maya Deren’s 1943 experimental film, “Meshes of the Afternoon,” and I thought I’d post it here for anyone who hasn’t see it or would like to see it again. It’s unfortunately in two parts and the picture isn’t quite true to the original 16mm. But you’ll still get the idea.
So I guess I really only decided to pursue a career as an artist pretty recently. I’ve been studying political science for four years, writing papers electoral patterns and voting behavior the like, and as fed up with that as I’ve been for the past couple years, it wasn’t really until I went to the Whitney Bienniel in March that it became so totally clear to me. So since then, I’ve been so focused on getting to New York that it didn’t even fucking dawn on me that there is a lot happening here in DC and that I should be getting involved with it. Maybe because it’s that I’m so revolted with politics and working in politics and thinking about politics that I felt that DC no longer had anything to offer me. But that’s pretty dumb.
So last weekend I went to the opening of “Punk Love,” Susie Horgan’s show of photographs from the birth of the DC punk scene. I wouldn’t have even known about it (which is crazy) if my friend Aley hadn’t told me she wanted to go when she came to visit from Kansas. So how ridiculous is it that it took someone coming into town from Wichita to get me out to a gallery opening? Anyway, the work was amazing and the opening was just about as fun as it possibly could have been. All of Fugazi was in attendance as was Henry Rollins and all the folks from Dischord and all of that.
Then, Saturday night, we went to Antonia Tricarico and Lely Constantinople’s double opening at Transformer. It was packed since it’s a tiny space, and the Dischord crew was there again and it was as much as fun as Punk Love. I finally met Cynthia Connely, whose show also at Transformer had quite an impact on me in April ‘05, and she had seen the photograph I had taken of the opening (the only other DC opening I’d ever attended) that ran in the Washington Post Magazine. Ok, so anyway, she was handing our postcards for a new show of her own, which opened this past Friday at the Arlington Arts Center.
I love Cynthia’s work and went to her opening two days ago. She has 15 images of roadside arrow signs hanging there, with their titles pressed right on top of the image in red block letters (I wrote an extensive review of Cynthia’s ‘05 Transformer show where I talked about her inventive and charming ways of presenting her work) and she had chairs set up to kind of hang out. Her opening was either part of are going on at the same time as a larger one, but her little gallery was the only one that had the feel of like, a family reunion or something. And I met Antonia, who recognized me from the other two openings the week before. She invtied me to yet another opening at the Corcoran on the 22nd.
So. All of this is really to say that there is a small and lively community of very talented photographers here in town, and I’ve been kind of a moron to get involved. All I have to do is go, and I haven’t been! At a party Saturday night, I ran into an artist who I know from my short stit at the Corcoran a couple of years ago who told me about her involvement in the WPA/C anonymous show that’s coming up. I’ve lived here for four years and I’m still not even a member of WPA/C! I’ve never been to Artomatic. I’ve missed huge shows that have come through the National Gallery and the Phillips Collection. I’ve been to Transformer twice. I almost never go to the Corcoran. When I go to New York, I do and see everything I possibly can, from like Reena Spaulings to MoMA and in my own fucking town I’m totally detached. I mean, I’m more connected to the art scene in Houston.
So that’s ridiculous. I’m going to live here for like a less than six more months, so I have to get moving.
I just bought myself some hot new (to me) shit with the B&H bucks I’ve accumulated over the past few months (party favor from my bro’s wedding, then I sold them a bunch of stuff). I don’t know why anyone would every buy anything but used gear. I’m trying to streamline my equiptment since I have such random stuff. I’m getting rid of everything I have except the Hasselblad and 18-35mm Nikon lens to use with this F100 I just got. It’s going to be sweet.
I just helped my friend Charlotte get a little site up so she can show her work. Take a peek. You might notice a familiar motif in the site’s design. But hey. I stick with what works.
