"Sustenance" Update

Lots more visuals of the exhibition here. (For a larger version of the image at left, click on it; the work is by Jesse Morgan Barnett.)

The exhibition includes works by Brian Fridge, Chris Hefner, Darryl Lauster, Devin King, Frances Bagley, Iris Bechtol, Jeff Zilm, Jesse Morgan Barnett, Justin Ginsberg, Kate Helmes, Kimberly Aubuchon, Kristin Mariani, Linnea Glatt & Jim Cinquemani, Lizzy Wetzel, Lou Mallozzi, Ludwig Schwarz, Matt Hanner, Michael Mazurek, Patrick Murphy, Sedrick Huckaby, Shannon Brunskill (with Courtney Brown), Tom Orr, and Temporary Services. Exhibition checklist and more at the Sustenance FB page or blog.

"Sustenance" Exhibition

. . . opened at 11am today in the blue building at 337 Singleton Blvd., Dallas, and will stay open 'til 10pm tonite (and the show will be up for a month or so; see the Sustenance FB page or blog for more details).

Congrats to Stephen Lapthisophon, Anne Lawrence, and all the artists on an exciting show. (The pic at right is what you might see as you enter Brian Fridge's installation.)

Notes from Anne about the opening today:

Shannon Brunskill and Courtney Brown will start their performance around 11 a.m.
Linnea Glatt and Jim Cinquemani will start the "Social Circle: Watermelon Social" around 6 p.m.
Devin King will be performing in his space on the 2nd floor around 9 p.m.

There is plenty of parking around the building. You can turn into the lot before the building, closest to the bridge or park in the large open lot across the street. Be careful crossing Continental! The cars are fast.

The exhibition includes a small installation of ART WORK newspapers and related materials. These are truly the LAST of what I've got, so come 'n get 'em.

The World Came to Worley's

I'm not perfectly objective here, since Cris Worley is my homey; but. She opened her new space on Monitor in Dallas, TX last night, and it looked great, and everyone was there.

Cris had planned just to consult, and she'll be doing plenty of that; but she missed having a space in which to show work. She found a great location in the Design District, sharing a building with Gallery Urbane. The space will be open Saturdays 11-5 and weekdays by appointment; see crisworley.com for more info.

Photos of many of the people and most though not all of the art work at the opening here (apologies to the people I missed shooting and esp. to those I didn't miss – none of the usual fixes have been made).

The Teletron: Mind-Controlled Music

Seriously. From Robert Schneider of Apples in Stereo (red print in honor of the Apples).

Great Poster Explaining Net Neutrality:

Click on the image for a larger version, or go to OnlineMBA for an even bigger version.

$12.8 Trillion for Banks vs. . . . ?

Bloomberg reporter Bob Ivry has confirmed, U.S. taxpayers didn't just fork out $700 billion for TARP; they're also on the hook for $12.8 trillion for other assistance to the banks (see the PBS interview excerpt here).

Exactly who's gotten the benefit of our largesse? The Federal Reserve refuses to tell, despite being hauled into court. The reporter who led in pursuing this story – to the point of suing the Fed for the info and winning – was Mark Pittman.

Pittman died in 2009 at only 52. The precise cause of death is unknown. The Fed's appeal of the case is still pending.

(Per Bloomberg, at the time of Pittman's death, his outgoing messages bore a link to the photo of Woody Guthrie at left.)

Next time someone tells you we have to cut Social Security (even though it's fully funded through 2037 and could be brought into balance for another fifty years beyond that with an adjustment of less than one percent to contribution amounts – see Social Security Works), or that we can't afford $50 billion for jobs, tell them about the more than $12.8 trillion we've afforded to banks and suggest we take back some of that instead.

Mel Chin's "Fundred Dollar Bill" Project

You may remember the first pic, right, from my 2008 post on Prospect.1 New Orleans.

What I should also have mentioned is that this "safe house," created by artist Mel Chin, was the launching pad for a massive art project, Operation Paydirt, in which we're all invited to collaborate.

Chin visited New Orleans after Katrina and learned that not only had the city been decimated by the disaster, but thousands of its kids were struggling with severe learning disabilities and behavioral problems because dangerous levels of lead had been allowed to accumulate in the local soil. He discovered that lead contamination is pervasive in many U.S. cities, and he determined to do something about it.

Chin developed a template that can be used to make "FUNdred Dollar Bills," and using this template, kids and others across the nation have created thousands of unique artworks and sent them to Chin's collaborative. Their goal is to amass three million FUNdred bucks by the end of the 2010-2011 school year and deliver them by armored truck to Congress, to help bring attention to the problem.

They want you to become part of the collaborative by making and contributing your own Fundred buck(s). You can download the template and find lots more info here, including where to send your bucks.

We included the template in the Non-Profit Margin exhibition at CentralTrak, as one of several examples of socially-engaged, participatory art projects in the vein contemplated by Temporary Services' ART WORK newspaper, and we solicited people to make and contribute their own FUNdred Dollar Bills. You can see a few more examples here (the two shown in this post are by Gabe Dawe and moi).

Please consider making this a project for your family, students, or drinking buddies. Here's a video about Operation Paydirt:

For Translations of Business Jargon

click to unsuck