Nermo

Post holiday excess, I’m going to tone it down for a month or two and ramp-up my artistic production, because 1. I need to and 2. I’m toying with the idea of starting an MFA program in 2013, so I need to get my portfolio back on point this year.

Here’s the plan:

1. Build out my new Portfolio Website. It’s mostly photography at this point, but that’s a good start.

2. See more art (galleries, museums, installations, art walks, opening parties, etc.)

3. Make more art (photos, illustrations, sculptures, design projects, writing, etc.)

4. Stay in more evenings and spend as little money as possible.

5. Eat healthier.

In case you didn’t click the portfolio, here are photos I took from the plane on my way home from Denver:

I finally finished the illustration for this year’s Lunar New Year Dinner Party.

Here’s what’s held my attention of late:

While home for the holidays, I spent some time with my dad in the carpentry shop, where I made a french rolling pin for a dear friend who is starting her own cookie business, and a muddler for the guys behind the bar at Anvil Bar and Refuge in Houston.

Oh yeah, I drove through Texas over the holidays, starting with ten days in Vermont and 36-hours in NYC (one great night at Prime Meats and Bourgeois Pig). I was supposed to spend New Year’s in Manhattan, but I got a call at Christmas asking if I wouldn’t rather celebrate in the middle of nowhere, than attend the usual fete at Death and Co., so I flew to San Antonio, where I was driven through the night to a little town called Marfa.

We spent New Year’s Eve in a little honky-tonk called Padre’s watching Jimmy Dale Gillmore and Butch Hancock play to a sold out house of about 120 people, then David Byrne walked in around 11 o’clock. He seemed like a nice guy! He said hi to me when he walked in and waited in line for a drink like everyone else.

From there, we drove to Austin to see friends and Houston for a couple nights to visit the above-mentioned Anvil, to experience “Fancy Cocktails in Plastic Cups” at Fitzgerald’s and to linger well past closing with the gorgeous ladies behind the bar at Grand Prize.

–––

What else? I got a new glass water bottle from Takeya that I love.  Drinking from glass is great because it never tastes off, and this model is slim enough to fit in any cup holder and has a wide mouth.  I also think their glass tea makers would be great for infusing spirits and making liqueurs.

Caligraffiti
The Skitch clothes hanger design opens me up to the idea of a hangar that holds a whole outfit, but rather than the creepy punk skeleton motif, I’d like to see something classier that holds a pair of pants, shirt, jacket and even socks, boxers and an undershirt.  The idea of just grabbing one hanger in the morning seems amazing to me, and it would save space too, so I may prototype my own design soon.

Strelein Warehouse by Ian Moore Architects

I would like to live here, or build my own little modernist hide-away. I’ve been into very small homes of late and wish I had a tiny plot of land on which to build.

This video amuses me, even if I don’t wear scarves.

The year of the Rabbit is coming to an end and the Dragon is upon us, so I should throw another party.

I generally invite 20-30 people to my tiny apartment and serve 8-10 courses over the span of the evening. This year, I would like to get out of the kitchen, so we are going to shake it up a bit, but be no less ambitious.

1. Since it is a Water Dragon year, there will be several interstitial liquid courses, and by that I mean shots.  Between courses, we’ll have a palate-cleansing round of Red Dragon Shots, Golden Dragon Shots, etc.

2. All of the utensils and dishes will be compostable, because I don’t wanna do dishes.

3. Food will be prepped to the heat-and-serve level. Nothing fried, as it requires too much attention.

So far, the menu is looking like something like the following:

Braised Bunny Banh Mi

Red Dragon Welcome Shot

Dragon Roll (sushi with some combo of bbq eel, cuke, avo, tobiko and tempura)

Dragon Buns (steamed bao full of bbq gator)

Dragon Ribs (probably just my OMG ribs again, but grilled instead of pan-fried)

Potstickers

Green Dragon Shot

Noodle Bar with lots of customizing options

Golden Dragon Shot

Magic Dragon Puffs (profiteroles filled with something fun)

Orange Slice Jello Shots

Looking back at previous invites, I also realized that I must craft another absurd illustrated invitation.  Hmmm… something with dragons and current events… Occupy Mordor?

Thoughts, questions or suggestions?  Please comment below!

So, in avoiding other obligations, I decided to find more subtle ways to post a barcode.  The newly-ubiquitous QR codes are hard to miss, being all blocky and checkerboard-like, but traditional bar codes are easier to disguise.  I’ve got a fistful of ideas for how to do this, but here are the first three. After this, I am thinking of a ray gun blast, integrating it into a wood grain pattern, water from a shower head, and an urban skyline.

You can click on any of the above to get a larger image and which can be scanned with any barcode scanner app.

Along with CreateShareWear, my other 5 jobs and an active social life, another recent venture has been taking up a lot of my time, hence the lack of posting on this blog.

I created MobileDocent as a digital tour guide for gallery visitors to access to rich multimedia content (text, links, images, audio, video and more), enhancing their experience of the art and objects being exhibited in museums and cultural institutions through their web-enabled mobile devices (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.).

I’ve been working with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to test my project and we have decided to begin piloting MobileDocent with the January Icons of Attention exhibition of work by Kamau Amu Patton, so stay tuned for updates on the progress of the program, and mark your calendars for opening night party, January 22nd, 2010.

For more info on MobileDocent, visit MobileDocent.com.

I’ve been neglecting this blog because I am deeply involved in a couple other projects, and this pesky day job keeps getting in the way, but I am very excited to announce that today is the official launch of the Picpoket, from CreateShareWear, a clothing/art/social media venture that I founded with a friend.  I’ve been coding like a madman all week trying to make the site perfect, and I am awfully proud of what I have built.

The premise is simple, but the overarching plan is exciting.  We are selling custom hoodies (and eventually other clothing and accessories) that hold your video iPod, facing out, so you can show your images and video to the world.  In conjunction, we will soon be launching a social networking site for our users to share their work with the Picpoket community to wear all over the world, and collaborate on collective arts and activism projects.

Check out the site, let me know what you think, visit our blog, and if you want to pre-order a hoodie now, we’re offering a special price, a bonus grab bag of art, and premier status on the social network!

Because I couldn’t just spend the weekend celebrating the 4th and packing for Tales, I:

1. made a batch of hot sauce from farm-fresh chilies
2. created a tincture of shiso
3. made a gallon of traditional umeshu
4. improvised almost a gallon of apricot/pluot “umeshu”
5. infused a bottle of Hendrick’s gin with cucumber and persimmon
6. devised the Tomcat Collins with the aforementioned gin (recipe posted soon)
7. hosted the “Squash Blossom” dinner party with the lovely TSB (we may not be together any more, but we still throw one hell of a dinner party), where I served the aforementioned cocktail the following hors d’oeuvres
8. deep-fried two kinds of cheese-stuffed squash blossoms (chevre and mascarpone) with 4 dipping sauces (southwestern salsa, spicy tomoato, lemony aioli and a green onion sour cream).

I forgot about an old project I played with in grad school. I dug up old images from a repository of ephemera on the Library of Congress website, and repurposed them into whimsical little things with no relevance to their original intentions. This photograph of a munitions storage area from the Civil War seemed dreary, so I livened it up a little.

TSB and I are renting a gorgeous house in wine country with two other couples this weekend, with the intent of getting out of the city, spending Saturday tasting wine and spending a few days just having fun.  The girls snatched up menu responsibilities for Friday and Saturday dinners before I had a chance to interject, but I love to cook for a crowd and I don’t suffer from hangovers, so I’m taking on post wine-tasting Sunday brunch.

I’ll be serving duck hash with poached eggs, a perennial winner, which can be prepped ahead and quickly sauteed in the morning.  In the news lately, science supports bacon’s hangover healing powers, but  I’ve already covered savory/crispy, so I’m making a braised pork belly, which I butchered myself in class over the weekend.  I still have a ton of marmalade, so I think I will feature it by offering crepes, toast and yogurt with kumquat marmalade along with mimosas and spicy bloody marys.