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In a study funded by the makers of Nalgene products, the habits of 3,750 individuals living in the top 25 largest U.S. cities were surveyed, finding that San Francisco is America’s least wasteful city.  (Hooray!–Oakland wasn’t surveyed)

The study gauged behavior on waste, sustainability, shopping, transportation and more. The results were weighted to give more credit to behaviors that had immediate and significant impact on the planet (e.g., driving less, recycling or reducing trash) to small habits that are more indicative of a mindset and non-wasteful approach to life (e.g., reusing containers, limiting shower time or saving wrapping paper and ribbons).

The study shows that more and more people are readily embracing small, everyday habits to cut waste, but convenience is still trumping prudence when it comes to significant wasteful behavior including transportation and personal conservation efforts.  (public transportation, composting, using a rain barrel and a clothesline, and avoiding using a car for trips under 2 miles)

I found this sortof amazing:

*60 percent of urban Americans that live in a city with public transportation and own a car, said they never use public transportation

*65 percent of urban Americans are planning to drive for trips that less than two miles from home rather than taking public transportation, biking and/or walking

*We’re still a car culture. 69 percent of those urban Americans surveyed do not plan on taking public transportation

And so you know:#2=NYC, #3=Portland, #25(last place)=Atlanta

Ross Dickinson, Valley Farms, 1934

4/2/09 UPDATE:
A Similar New Deal Program, the short-lived (6 mo) Public Works of Art Project, paid artists to depict “the American Scene.”  The Smithsonian’s American Art Museum has an exhibit, “1934: A New Deal for Artists” showing some of the works that were created under this program.  This show will run through January 3, 2010, so there is plenty of time to check it out.  They also have created a neat website where you can locate the places that some of the paintings from this collection depict.  Fun Fact: The murals at Coit Tower (San Francisco) are the largest project completed under this program.

A really great collection of articles and resources is coming to a close after 2 months of input from various writers, artists, and contributors. Hrag Vartanian wraps up the discussion by pointing to the main topics of discussion and notes other things that have been talked about all around the intertubes.  The next topic for discussion is, “Art and Economics”

Everything old is new again, (left) a Soviet-era poster by Alexander Rodchenko, and (right) a contemporary poster by Shepard Fairey

FLASH POINTS is a regular conversational series (on the ART:21 blog)that focuses on issues relevant to the state of the art world at large, contemporary art education, and issues artists face today. You can participate by contributing feedback, posing a follow-up question, sharing anecdotes, or suggesting new topics in the comments area below.

This weekend of fun was increased by the additions of my sister Stephanie and her boyfriend Tom.  We had a lovely time at home, in Zion, and then in Snow Canyon (near St. George).  We are getting sad already that we only have one weekend left of Utah awesomeness.  But it will be good to get back to the real world as well. I guess?

Zion’s rocks and waterfalls

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via theselby.com

It’s always fun to check out the homes of creative people. Here’s a mother lode from all over the world.

Posted via web from thepresentgroup’s posterous

I have found two examples (via Exposure Compensation) of artists taking cues from the art subscription model as a way for a community to help fund their work and then reap the benefit of that support.

Dalton Rooney has started a Print of the Month Club.  He’s got some interesting ideas: tiered involvement- you can sign up for 3, 6, or 12 month intervals, and he allows subscribers to occasionally skip a month if they aren’t interested in that month’s piece.

CStein is trying out another method- he asks for a monthly $10 payment support, and then at the end of the year you can get two prints from a selection he puts up for subscribers, or you can apply your contribution towards buying any other of his prints (though they are typically more expensive)

The power of collective support can be huge- and subscribers reap the benefit in lower cost works for their collections.  Hooray!

Posted via web from thepresentgroup’s posterous

There’s been a bunch of hubub about it lately: NPR, CNN, The New York Times, 20/20, and on.  Mitch Cope and Gina Reichert, a couple living and working in Detroit, are generating a lot of attention with their effort to create a new perspective on Detroit: as a place for artists.   They are living it too.  Because of the unbelievably cheap cost of lots and buildings, they have bought up a bunch in a one block area (two empty lots for gardens, one as their own home, one or two which they bought just because they were so damn cheap- then sold to friends, and one to create a new model of affordable, off the grid living: Powerhouse- which is to become a community art center and artists’ residency program)

Camera Obscura in the Powerhouse

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The goal of the Rhizome Commissions Program is to support emerging artists by providing grants for the creation of significant works of new media art. By new media art, we mean projects that creatively engage new and networked technologies to works that reflect on the impact of these tools and media in a variety of forms. Rhizome defines emerging artist as artists who exhibit great potential yet are not fully recognized within their field. Commissioned works can take the final form of online works, performance, video, installation or sound art. Projects can be made for the context of the gallery, the public, the web or networked devices.

Apply here!

Arts advocates, from Robert Redford to the president of New York’s Lincoln Center, are celebrating now. But I wonder, in a still, small voice, if this is really such a victory.

For one thing, in the larger scope of things, it’s not much money. Fifty million dollars, in a hastily assembled $800 billion stimulus, is just a bubble on a wave. It’s a rounding error, a random fluctuation. It doesn’t mean that arts support runs deep and strong. The battle for the arts has been going on for decades, and in my view — as a person in the arts myself — the arguments we make aren’t nearly strong enough

via online.wsj.com

Posted via web from thepresentgroup’s posterous

We had a really great week last week- with three friends here we worked during the days, sled, cooked, ate huge meals, and made ringtones at night.  For Oliver’s birthday we all took the day off and went to Bryce after a huge breakfast.   Food plays a big part in our lives if you can’t tell and so far, the one downside of Utah has been the restaurants.  Granted, we’ve only been to three. And every restaurant we go looking for from the guidebook has been closed.

As we entered a typical steak place on Saturday, a large family one by one looked over at us.  Then we were of course seated right next to them.  The father repeated about three times in a loud voice, “You know, every time you see a VW bus, I can guarantee there is a guy with facial hair and a girl with braids in it.”

We weren’t quite sure what that meant, but we did know it was directed at us.  I don’t think he understood the subtle difference between a regular flannel shirt and a neon flannel shirt. Anyways, some pictures:

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We’re proud to announce the artist for TPG10 is Stephanie Dean!

From Dean's series: "Boys/Men"

Stephanie Dean is a photographer living and working out of Chicago, IL.  She attended the California College of Arts (San Francisco & Oakland, CA) where she received her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Photography.  In 2005 she earned her Masters of Fine Arts in Photography from Columbia College, Chicago. Her photographic thesis was the body of work “?Boys/Men?” asking the question of when do modern boys become men. Her written thesis was on existentialism in Robert Frank’s The Americans.  She has taught at Columbia College Chicago and is currently teaching the History of Photography at Oakton Community College in Skokie & Des Plaines Illinois.

via artfagcity.com

An interesting compendium put together by Art Fag City of what people are saying about what’s happening in the arts as a result of the recession.

Posted via web from thepresentgroup’s posterous

IN REAL LIFE
At Capricious Space
March 7–28, 2009

Art Fag City, ASDF, Club Internet, Ffffound, The Highlights, Humble Arts Foundation, I Heart Photograph, Loshadka, Netmares/Netdreams, Platform For Pedagogy, Private Circulation, UbuWeb , VVORK, Why + Wherefore

An exhibition that invites innovative and independent online art initiatives to each come do a 4-hour residency inside the space of a gallery—attempting to explore how the distribution, production, analysis, and consumption of culture are rapidly evolving in an online context. In particular the exhibition aims to render the labor of these online practices transparent, providing “real life” access to these cultural producers, and overall inspiring public dialogue around their practices.

Capricious Space
103 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(between Bedford and Berry)
718.384.1208

Gallery hours (from March 7–March 28 only):
Saturday noon–8pm
Sunday noon–8pm

Plus special evening events:
Opening and Roundtable Discussion “Browser As Exhibition Space” / Saturday March 7 from 8-10pm
“Docent Tour of Art on the Internet” performed by Tyler Coburn / Friday March 13 from 8-10pm
Closing Party / Saturday March 28 from 8-10pm

Visit the online Calendar of Events for full details.

www.letsmeetinreallife.com
www.capriciousspace.com

Posted via web from thepresentgroup’s posterous

For the past couple of days I have been discovering Art Slant, as it calls itself the “#1 Contemporary Art Network.”

It is actually pretty impressive in its dynamic content building and the ways in which it connects artists, galleries, events, resources, writers, and even art lovers/collectors.  Any information that is added by any one person is added into anything or person that it relates to.  Example: If you add an event- the event gets added to the artist’s page, the gallery’s page, the curator’s page.

So artists may have a full page of information with their history of shows and images even if they have not even ever gone onto the website.

There are a couple of things that seem to be unfortunate:

-the inability for it to upload your own blog feed into your profile’s blog

-the fact that there seem to be three categories of profiles and there doesn’t seem to be a way to combine the different profiles: profesional profiles, gallery profiles, and resource profiles.  The Present Group now has a profile in each category and though they are connected through links, I would have to manually update

That last one perhaps won’t be a problem for most people.  So all in all, I am pretty excited by this website and might, just might, stop updating my terrible, ugly, out-of-date myspace profile as this seems a much better alternative with a much more honed audience.  There is also no “friending”.  Your connections are made through who you work with- so it isn’t a popularity contest.

Posted via web from thepresentgroup’s posterous

A followup article to the Town Hall Meeting by Angela Woodall appears today in the Oakland Tribune.

“Just mention Germany or Sweden and most U.S. artists break into a reverie (or tirade) over the kind of support their European counterparts receive from their governments. Here, surviving as an artist takes talent, a do-it-yourself attitude and the patience to hunt down funding.”

read more….

So we’re up and running in Utah and it’s pretty nice.  This morning we went on an early morning snowshoe before work.  I thought I would give you a litte snapshot.

Our cozy home

Oliver setup our desk. He gave me the window, but also glare. I still feel like I won.

View from my "office"

An early snowshoe and the muddy, muddy road that leads to our house.

We spent the past couple of days driving out to our new (for one month) home in Utah.  Our country has a lot of space. And though some people complain about the 5, I personally love it in the spring.  It’s a patchwork of different color blooming trees.  And all the recent rain in California brought super green hills and wide swaths of blooming wildflowers in orange and yellow.

Blooms on the 5

green hills

Orange! California poppies?

Camping at Cottonwood Cove, NV Lake Mead in the background

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