My friend Jill just set me up with a show of my paintings at Edie’s Shoes on capitol hill. Pop on over there and check them out. You can see more of them online in my painting gallery.

I paint with oils on canvas and I use a lot of paint. I spread it on with a palette knife layer after layer until I’m happy with it. Some of them have more than twenty layers of paint.

I am very happy to say that today I have completed the first stage of “The I Love You Project.” For this project I directed friends and family to close their eyes and say “I love you” over and over. The result is something special. This work could not have been done without the support of many people. To my family and friends who gave their hearts to this project, you have my greatest thanks.

In order to get the lighting for the project to match what I saw in my imagination I spent a month studying lighting with James Heck over at the Northwest Film Forum to learn how to get the lighting the way I wanted it. I learned a lot about my video camera. I shot the first 12 people on super-8 to get an idea of the difference between film and video.

I’ve edited the hours of footage down to three movies, a long 11 minute movie with most people, a short 3 1/2 minute movie with just a few people who transition well together, and a companion movie documenting some of the responses and reflections that participants had after their performance.

I feel that this project is still in it’s baby stages. I would like to diversify the performers to include a broader range of hair and skin colors, ethnic backgrounds, and I need to include more women to create a gender balance. I see this project as a growing database of the human expression of love.

Greg Lundgren has figured it out. Today marks the opening of his beautiful bar called “The Hideout” at 1005 Boren. Jennifer and I went down to see what’s going on and chat with him. Greg is known around town for putting together really great art shows. Now he’s got a gallery where he doesn’t have to worry about selling art. He gets to sell drinks with some of the freshest art in town on the walls. So, go down, get a drink, gander at the paintings, and even submit an article to the quarterly journal that will be put out with work made up right in the bar by the patrons!

I went and took 10 rolls into get developed and I got these two collages out of the bunch. I like them. I’d like to see them big.

Doug Aitken is a prolific artist who makes videos, photographs and books. Jen and I went to go see his lecture and opening last night. It was great. He showed some of his videos and showed about a million slides. If I could go back in time, I would have asked him to talk more about his creative process.

The interiors installation at the Henry Art Gallery is really good. The video stars Andre 3000, some folks from a Japanese fishmarket, and a guy over at the Robinson helicopter plant near the harbor here in Seattle who can tap dance. The audio for the video is something special that builds intensity in the same way that intensity builds up when you are watching a building burn and waiting for it to collapse.

Also at the Henry was a little playthings exhibit that featured an amazing video by Peter Fischli and David Weiss out of Switzerland. In the video, tires, scraps of metal, consumables like soap and other odds and ends all transition in a brilliant exercise in cause and effect.

In other news, I got my dvd burner last night and now I can burn dvds of the art videos that I make.

I just got back from a great thunderbirds hockey game. It was really close. We won against the silver tips 1-0. The tips have an awsome fan base. There were more of them than us on our home turf! It was our last game of the season. Mariners season is coming up in two weeks!

Here is an interesting article about Judy Scott, an artist who knows not that she is an artist. Click though to see some more of her art. Something about her sculpture is very satisfying to me.

update Just read this other article that clarifies some things about people with down’s syndrome

Last year I started my art business as an official business. I haven’t made much money, but I’ve bought a bunch of equipment so I need to figure out the whole deduction thingy. I’m going to a workshop at SAM to help artists do taxes.

Then I’m off to a thunderbird’s game.

I have a few new ideas popping around in my brain.

Ok, in my last post, it may have sounded like both NYC and Sea-town are both full of crap art… I didn’t mean that, I don’t like all art and even though I expected to find more art that I liked in NYC, I found that the ratio of good art and bad art are the same in Seattle and NYC. I can say that Seattle’s art scene is great and I know it because last night’s Seattle artwalk was great.

I stopped by at COCA on my way to the international district and saw the electricity show which had some highlights. It’s worth seeing. Stopped into 911 too, but didn’t see anything interesting. Would have stopped into Conworks, but saw it already and it’s worth seeing if you haven’t.

Daniel and I go to artwalk together. We’ve been doing it every month for the past 4 years. At 5:15 every first Thursday, we eat at the schezuan noodle bowl (because we order the same thing every time we now just order by the price… “We’ll have the $13.70.”) It is good and we catch up as friends for the past month. Besides designing gardens, Daniel is an artist. If you are lucky enough to visit his house, you are in for a treat. Just the way he piles and stacks stuff is enough to make you go ga-ga for his work.

We have a way of doing artwalk that works. If we don’t like it, we don’t go in. I usually only like about 25% of the art I see, so avoiding the art I don’t like makes for a good evening.

After dinner we walk to pioneer square, except that we skip the square. We walk past the James Harris gallery and go to Greg Kucera. We dodged in to see Brian Ohno’s gallery which had great stuff by a great artist all ink and bicycles. Then we are off to the Tashiro Kaplan spaces. G. Gibson recently moved in and she’s one of my favorites along with SOIL and Platform.

Then we go to the Gallery4Culture at the smith tower. We take a moment to appreciate the pretty marble above the staircase. We can rely on that marble for visual satisfaction. Then we go up the block and check out Howard House which right now has the same guy who’s at the Frye. It’s cool light painting poppy stuff. Howard House is a good bet. I saw the same artist’s show at the Frye earlier in the week. The Frye is always worth going to.

Then, if there is anything at SAM we go through there. Usually there isn’t, but last night there was. The Chinese Contemporary show is brilliant. They have like 15 or 20 video art pieces which is my favorite medium right now. Good stuff too. Definate must see.

Then we are off to Benham. Which was good last night too.

Then we go off to the main part of the artwalk, which now isn’t so hot. It used to be that artists would sell their art there, but with the gestapo of the City of Seattle making people get business licenses, that has scared off most of the emerging artist there. Now it is mostly crafts and I don’t want to buy candles on first Thursday.

Then we usually look through the windows at Davidson and Grover-Thurston and Foster-White because they close at 8.

Tonight Jennifer and I are off to Priceless Works in Freemont to see the show with Erik Borgeson’s work in it. Chauney Peck is curating. It should be a treat! The “Dead Girls” show we saw a few weeks ago there was brilliant.

Last night we also got tickets to go see Kings of Convenience next weekend! Hurray!