David Kramer-Toothless Alcoholic

A PREQUEL to the SEQUEL

2011-09-12T07:55:00.002-04:00

In Washington DC
at HEINER CONTEMPORARY

Prequel to the Sequel:
Waiting for a Hollywood EndingSeptember

9th - October 22nd 2011

1675 Wisconsin Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20007

nice link:

http://www.facebook.com/maryamkeyhani
or
www.heinercontemporary.com

BIG SHOW at Mulherin + Pollard

2011-09-09T14:03:00.002-04:00

I have a new show!
THE HANGOVER....TOO

EXHIBITIONS - GALLERY

DAVID KRAMER, The Hangover...Too
Opening reception: Wednesday, September 7, 6-9 pm

David Kramer, 70's Porn Painting, 2011, oil on canvas, bamboo, wood, paint, light fixtures, coloured bulbs, 74 x 65"

September 7 until October 2, 2011
at

MULHERIN + POLLARD
187 Chrystie Street and the end of Freeman Alley
New York, NY 10002

When asked the proverbial question, “Is the glass half full or half empty?” David Kramer’s response is something along the lines of: “Why? Don’t we have any more?”
David Kramer makes art work that tells jokes and stories or creates visual puns all asking similar types of proverbial questions and then questioning why the stock answers never quite seems to fit. Using advertisements and lifestyle magazine images, often from his youth in the 1970’s, Kramer is on an eternal mission looking for clues as to the whereabouts of the “Good Life” and the American Dream often depicted in these pages. His own proverbial questions often shape up to questions of why hasn’t his own life lived up to the promises doledout by both Hollywood and Madison Avenue.
A boozy humor is at the center of Kramer’s work. He laughs at his own eternal optimism. He steadfastly plows forward, cataloging the good life and sprinkling on top of it his singular brand of humorous copyright which often sells the viewer on the joke that he knows we are all by now “in” on. The joke that the American Dream seems to be maybe not much more than just a dream, and that all of the rumors about the mighty American will to succeed has maybe turned the page to a more lazy and tempered success story. The Hollywood ending is better off left to Hollywood and forgotten a soon as the lights go on and we leave the theater.
For this exhibition, The Hangover, Too, his first with Mulherin + Pollard, Kramer has built a wine bar into the gallery surrounded with his paintings drawings and sculptures from the past year. The wine bar is part joke about the lamenting and whining artist who spends his time drinking away his valuable time medicating his state, and also a reference to what Kramer sees as the only viable industry left in the American cannon: building theme park type places of recreation to distract ourselves from the business at hand, to sustain the greatness and promise that this country continues to boast of long after the flame has turned to a flicker.
Also on view is a sculpture, Mexico City Highway, a miniature stretch of roadway that passes through the Favela. Kramer has provided in the sculpture a roadside billboard, which depicts an image of an obviously white couple of models feeding each other chocolates. A scene which he has translated from his own trip to Mexico City this year, where he saw a society that has learned to accept the idea that the riches of a nation could be rationed into the hands of a few while the masses are left to only desire what they are allowed to see in advertisements, but my never own themselves.
David Kramer was born in New York City where he currently lives with his wife Susan Mitchell, and their son Martin. He has exhibited widely around North America and Europe, including recent one person shows at Armand Bartos Fine Art (Seems like We’ve Down This Road Before: A survey of works 1987-2010) 2010,
Aeroplastics Contemporary, Brussels (If you really Want Me To Go Away, Just Give Me What I Want…) 2010, and with Galerie Laurent Godin , Paris (…Because I Am Not Richard Prince) 2010. He is currently a Special Editions resident at the Lower Eastside Print Shop in NYC.

http://davidkramerthehangovertoo.blogspot.com/2011/08/david-kramer-hangovertoo-solo.html

Because I Am Not Richard Prince...

2010-10-26T14:56:00.007-04:00

Here are some images from my new show at
Galerie Laurent Godin in
Paris.
If you want to see the show, or need some more info,
try the website:
www.laurentgodin.com
they are located at
5 rue du Grenier St-Lazare
75003 Paris

Thanks...
David

Just Got Back...

2010-09-15T18:52:00.006-04:00

I just got back in town, I 've been traveling for a few weeks. The last 2 weeks were spent in Belgium.
I have a show in Brussels and it is a good one.

If You Really Want To See Me Go Away....
...Just Give Me Whatever It Is That I Want.

At
Aeroplastics Contmeporary
through October 30

Here are some images from the incredible space.

check out the website:
www.aeroplastics.net

END OF THE CENTURY

2010-07-17T16:09:00.002-04:00

I just watched
End Of The Century
The Story of the Ramones
on Youtube
WOW.

Amazing film.
I was never a big rock and roll guy. I love rock music and listen all of the time. And even though I did spend years running around going to clubs to see music, I never paid attention to who was in what group, or where groups came from, of who influenced them etc etc.
I guess I was always saving that stuff for the FIne Arts.
But this film was amazing and the story of the Ramones is great.
You have to wonder if those guys really got their due...really made it the way that so many other bands had, if they wouldn't have been so impossible to each other.
But then they wouldn't be the Ramones.

The lesson here is a shitty one. Some artists are born to struggle and have a shitty uphill battle.
I identify with this movie and only hope that I am not flailling in vain, if you know what I am talking about...
David

NYTimes dose it right!

2010-07-09T07:10:00.001-04:00

Once you get over the sad news about LeBron...
Here is some good news in today's paper:

A link to an excellent review of the Lush-Life show I am in
at Sue Scott Gallery, and the rest of this sprawling show on the Lower East Side....

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/arts/design/09lush.html?_r=1&ref=arts

There is a nice photo of my bar in today's paper

David

2010-06-16T03:54:00.003-04:00

I was at an opening the other night. I ran into this friend of mine. She is a painter and when I saw her she was chatting with this other guy who I found out is a painter too. So this woman says to us, "You know, all three of us where all in the same show together once..." And it turned out to be true. Back in the summer of 1995 we'd all been in a big group show at a gallery called
K and E on Broome Street in SoHo. It was a show called HOT.
I showed a big flashing sign that said the word SEXY on the floor made with wood and painted metal and light bulbs.
.At the time all of my work was letters and words. Giant welded steel sentences that said things like, "NICE GUYS FINISH LAST..." over and over again. Collages with torn photos and rub on letters.
The director of the gallery really liked my work. We'd done a show together already and she told
me she really wanted to keep working together, but the owner of the gallery didn't like the work.
She told me my work was "too abstract."
TOO ABSTRACT!?!
It was all words and letters! There was nothing abstract about it.

Anyway I bring this up because I was talking to a friend of mine last night who was sort of considering all of the work in my show up at A.Bartos. So this guys says,"You know, the only piece in the show that doesn't have any words is the Van Gogh painting..."
Which is sort of true except for the furniture and wall pieces etc. But the funny part was
for some reason my immediate response was,
"...The Applause Sign doesn't have any words, either!"
See. I guess I'm not so smart after all.
DK

Nice review

2010-06-15T22:37:00.004-04:00

Here is a link to a nice review for my show
at A.Bartos FA.
Please check it out....
http://artcards.cc/review/david-kramer-romanticizing-his-limits/794/

Written by Helen Homan Wu. I think she likes it.

ALSO
here are some images recently sent to me from the gallery:

BEACH WEEKEND with Friends

2010-06-15T07:46:00.003-04:00

I spent the weekend at the beach. A friend's beach house. There with our friends and and their friends,
a large group of almost twenty adults and kids. It is difficult enough for me to navigate living in a house with anyone else (i.e. my wife and kid) but somehow I managed the weekend with four other families and their rules and regulations and behaviors.

Of course, as you can imagine, at a certain point the subject of parenting actually came up and was discussed, open for review. Everyone had opinions on how to do it, and had no trouble expressing them. I am kind of an unusual parent in that I will openly admit from time to time that parenting is hard, if not impossible. Having a kid has really only taught me one thing about my own up bringing: that my parents were terrible parents. Nice people, but TERRIBLE parents. I didn't learn anything.

So somehow we all got onto the topic of our kid's cursing and fouled mouths and I admitted that
just because I have a kid I haven't stopped myself from cursing at all. I actually like cursing as I think it adds flavor to any dull conversation. And I admitted that I didn't really mind so much at all that my son was developing a potty mouth too. I was only concerned that he used his curses well. Economically. I just want him to be able to curse with a flourish, Then no one would complain as they would be charmed by the great use of language.

Anyway, as I said there were other families around. Families that seemed as comfortable with praying before dinner as I am with telling my son to "get his ass in bed before I come in there and beat the crap out of him!"
I could tell that I was making some folks blush. But it wasn't for affect, I swear. I was only sharing my parenting secrets.

Anyway, later at dinner on one of the nights there, we all got to talking about our kids again
and I was saying that my son had recently become very interested in this lousy Mel Brooks movie, SPACEBALLS.
THis was a shitty spoof of the Star Wars series and it was not only not funny but really probably the most shameful moment in Brooks' career. Everyone at the table agreed. So I announced that I had recently told my son that I was going to show him BLAZING SADDLES as he aught to at least be taught what a good Mel Brooks film looks like at home. He shouldn't have to learn this stuff on the street.
Well, one of the parents sent her wine flying through her nose and I was suddenly silenced by a wave of coughing that drowned out my my educational thesis.

I think that I learned something of great value here which of course like all good lessons is nothing new, just the stating of the most obvious. Those who can't do teach. Those who do, do. And it is best to keep your mouth shut when it is obvious to everyone that you have absolutely no idea what it is that you are doing.
DK

The Opening Was Great

2010-06-10T21:35:00.005-04:00

The show at Armand Bartos Fine Art is great. The opening was a lot of fun.I was super happy with the crowd. So many great people. I couldn't help myself so much so that I burst into song!

DK

Here's a link:
http://www.flipshare.com/view.aspx?nRecipient=&nFrame=NmUxOWJhNmYtYTcyNC00NDgyLTk4YWQtMGU2Mzc2NTYyNmNi&nMedia=ODAyNjRkZTAtZjQ2NS00NDU4LWFhY2ItZDdkZDhlMjhmNzkw&nT=2267712027260790

UP COMING GROUP SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT

2010-06-03T21:52:00.000-04:00

Motion Deconstructed
Private View June 9th, 6:30 – 9:00 PM, at the Classic Car Club, a show curated by Gary Krimershmoys of Quintessentially Art
I love my automobile..she is my life, my artistic and spiritual life..full of riches..she is more dear, more useful, more full of education than my library, where the closed books sleep on their spines, than my paintings, which hang dead on my walls all around me, with their immobile shy, tree, water and figures..
Octave Mirbeau, La 628-E8, 1908
Art and the automobile are two of the most luxurious, aspirational and divisive objects in humanity’s recent history. At the Motion Deconstructed show, we would like to invite you to take a contemporary look at what art can say about the automobile’s place in a modern society.
Motion Deconstructed deals with the myriad of ways society fetishizes the beauty of the car, uses it as a status symbol and makes it one of the primary materialistic goals of people’s labours, but without bypassing its dark side as a clogger of streets and junkyards. Here you will not find traditional scenes in automotive art depicting race cars going around racetracks or shining as they park on a well manicured lawn. The themes of beauty and banality that are present in automobiles, juxtaposed with the auto-exotica in the Club, should make the viewer question what the connection of art and the mechanized society in motion means.
Classic Car Club is an ideal venue to show the physical link between art and cars, a much more evocative place then the traditional white box of the gallery. The group exhibition will showcase the work of Indira Cesarine, Lawrence Heller, David Kramer, Oksana Mas, John Melville, Kimberly du Ross, and Aaron Young.
Location: Classic Car Club, 250 Hudson Street, NYC http://classiccarclubmanhattan.com/
To RSVP or for further information on Motion Deconstructed and the artists at the exhibition, contact Gary Krimershmoys or Lara Lorenzana at artny@quintessentially.com. And check out Quintessentially Art’s broad range of services at www.quintessentiallyart.com

2010-05-30T22:46:00.001-04:00

OK so here is a bigger image
The show is at
Armand Bartos Fine Art
25E73rd Street
NYC
I hope you can make it there!

Seems Like We've Been Down This Road Before

2010-05-25T17:53:00.002-04:00

Here is the first official word of an upcoming show for June 9.
Details to follow but
mark your calendars.
David

http://www.armandbartos.com/

Television Appearance

2010-04-28T06:50:00.000-04:00

I was on television as part of
NJ Arts Channel's program
STATE of the ARTS
this week....
It is a piece about a show that I am part of in NEWARK, NJ at
cWOW. The show is called LOL
curated by Larry Walczak....

You can watch the piece here:
http://www.njn.net/artsculture/starts/season09-10/2805.html

CHECK IT OUT!
The piece is called
Art With A Twist and it is about 10 minutes long.
Worth the watch

More for Miami

2009-11-24T07:26:00.005-05:00

Here is a drawing heading down to Miami...!

DK

Big Log Seating Arrangement + drawings

2009-11-19T07:19:00.002-05:00

I am packing up works to go to Miami/Basel.
Including some excellent new chairs that I made. The "bark" on these logs are actually cardboard. Recycled baby!

Anyway- If you are down there, in Miami, these will be with
Galerie Laurent Godin. Come over and have a seat!
DK

and another

2009-11-16T22:30:00.003-05:00

Jewish Santa

2009-11-16T22:11:00.002-05:00

Here's a recent story.......

The City of Lights vs The Melting Pot.

2009-10-10T05:31:00.005-04:00

Back in June when I went to France for the first time I wasn't drinking or smoking. It was a difficult trip. The weather was perfect and everyone in Paris seemed to be sitting out doors on the sidewalks drinking beers and espressos and smoking away. Believe me when I say it was kind of sad to be not joining in. In the past when I traveled to do a show, I would drink and smoke as much as I wanted. After all, alcohol and nicotene were ingredients there to help me cook up what ever I was to be making over there (not to mention using them as reliable crutches for whenever the stress level hit high). But I was committed to my clean living ways as I had been so sick when my liver stopped working. I didn't really even want to go back there. I was comfortable with myself, just as I was comfortable with the French for living the way that they did. The people I was working with all smoked and drank. And I was happy to be there hanging around with them.

One time I was asked to join some friends for dinner. I met the wife of one of my friends who noticed that I wasn't joining in with the festivities as it were.
"You don't drink or smoke cigarettes?" she asked. I explainedf that I had been very ill, and that it just didn't feel right to be doing that stuf right now. "Well thank god" she said. SHe said she was afraid that I was "One of those Americans" who were all fucking rightous about these things. I said "No." I am not like that. In fact, I am down right forgiving about that stuff. Come over to my studio and feel free to smoke. You can even ash right on the floor. I sill don't smoke or drink very much any more. I will now, have an occasional glass of wine. And I still day dream about when I will finally have clocked enough years in my life to take up smoking again in my sprint towards the finish line.

The other day I was on the subway. I was having enough trouble readjusting to being back in New York after a second trip to France this summer. I looked up and saw a poster of a glass brimming over like a head of frosty bubbles of a just poured beverage. But it was not bubbles that I was looking at, but a glass full of fat. The poster was designed to get you to drink water instead of sugary drinks! Yeech.
I fucking hate Mike Bloomberg and his self rightous benevolent despot routine. I want to move back to France.
DK

Some Pictures

2009-10-06T05:00:00.008-04:00

Here are some installation shots from my exhibit-
OUTSIZING THE DOWNSIZE
from the DOCK ART FAIR in Lyon, France (September).
Viva la France!

http://www.laurentgodin.com/artists_detail.php?id_artiste=22

French wine

2009-09-14T22:44:00.006-04:00

French Wine
or
On Getting Some Teeth Back

Right before I left for France I had a physical at my doctor's office. It was funny to see my doctor because once I saw him prior to all of my health issues of last year, and proudly had told him about my drinking and smoking at the time. I remember he asked me if I was a smoker and I told him then that I was smoking only about a half a dozen or so cigarettes in a day which I meant as a sign of my control of the situation." Well" he said, "most people try to quit at your age..." I didn't get his drift at the time, but when he asked me how much I drank, he almost fell out of his chair when I reported that I drank about a six -pack a night.
I don't know why, but the thing that I remember most was his asking "what brand" I was drinking. Maybe he was after some kind of stock tip but none-the- less, after my then-physical, all of my numbers where totally normal and I was in tremendous health. Then, of course, my health took a nosedive and the rest was history.
Anyway- so I went to see my doctor last week and this is a guy who was very familiar with my health issues and my drinking habits. But he told me that despite all of my clean living over the past year or so, the liver issues that I had had (which are now over with thank god) managed to screw up my #'s and my cholesterol was suddenly through the roof and I had not done any of the things that one normally does to throw the balance off like gain a shit load of weight all of a sudden.
So my doctor told me all about all of my food and diet and exercise stuff that I needed to be doing and then he said,
"You should probably have a glass of red wine every couple of days..." Well, he did not have to suggest that twice. I never really liked wine all that much but it sounded like a plan. SO I went out with my wife for a drink and we had one and that was great and now I am enjoying the health benefits of some good positive anti-oxidants.
Anyway- so I have been in France for over a week now. And I must say it is very enjoyable to
be here and not all that wrapped up in the saying no to all of the things that I would have been over doing in the past.
I still have to make myself say no to cigarettes, which is just about the unfair thing in the world. And I pass on the
beer and booze, but give myself a glass of the old red every once in a while.
Last night I went out to dinner with a bunch a people and we were in Lyon for this excellent art fair (which is going pretty well by the way) and we were starving because we'd been working like mad. So the guy who is paying for dinner orders me an appetizer of foie gras and big plate of frogs' legs. Listen...it was fucking delicious but if I am going to keep eating like this, I don't care how much red wine and leafy green vegetables I eat, my cholesterol is going out of sight.
I just want to know how to say Lipator in French.
DK

Off to Paris/Lyon

2009-09-05T08:36:00.006-04:00

I am please do announce that I am leaving for Paris in the morning to
work on an installation for the Docks Art Fair in Lyon.
The Docks Fair is particularly exciting because it opening coincides with the
opening of the French Bianalli also in Lyon.

Anyway- I have many exciting new works to show and
a large installation to realize while in Paris.

All the best,
Dk
Docks Art Fair, Lyon
DAVID KRAMER
Outsizing the Downsize
Another swank modernist apartment built out of shit materials
14 - 20 septembre 2009
Vernissage le lundi 14 septembre

http://2009.docksartfair.com/

David Kramer est né en 1963 sur une petite île au large des Etats-Unis. De son perchoir à New York, l'artiste s'amuse de l'impalpabilité démesurée du rêve américain. Cela étant, David Kramer aspire à une fin hollywoodienne tout aussi insaisissable, une fin qui règle les problèmes et satisfait tous les désirs.
Pour Docks, David Kramer transforme le stand en un environnement domestique confortable, à l'image de ceux publiés dans les magazines d'art de vivre. Toutefois l'oeuvre de l'artiste reste une contrefaçon « faîte-maison », réalisée avec des matériaux pauvres, offrant ainsi une preuve concrète que les choses entraperçues dans les magazines existent réellement.

Cet environnement sert de toile de fond aux dessins de Kramer, inspirés des réclames issues de l'âge d'or du rêve américain, une époque optimiste mais révolue. Avec des clins d'oeil satiriques, l'artiste incorpore ses propres vérités à l'intérieur de concepts pré-formatés, et s'accroche à l'idée très romantique qu'un jour il se réveillera, et que ses désirs seront devenus réalité.

--------------------------------------------------

David Kramer was born in 1963 on a small island off the coast of the USA. From his perch in NYC, Kramer makes quips at what he sees as the outsized impossibility of the American Dream. That said, Kramer yearns for the equally evasive Hollywood ending that will solve all of the problems and fulfill the desires.
For Docks, David Kramer builds a comfortable domestic environment as he has seen in numerous lifestyle magazines. But Kramer's construction is a low-budget facsimile built with cheap materials, that provides him proof positive that these things seen in magazines actually do exist.
This setting serves as a backdrop to Kramer's drawings, which depict ads from a past, and more optimistic era in American advertising. Using satirical insights, the artist tries to place his own realities into the packaged dreams, while trying to hang onto the romantic notion that one day he will wake up and his dreams really will have come true.

Meet the Mets- David Wright's new helmet

2009-09-02T12:53:00.006-04:00

Ever since I was a kid, I've been a Yankee fan. This all started many years ago when I was 5 and my dad took me to a ballgame at my request for my birthday. This was in April of 1969 and we went to a Mets game and the Mets went on to lose to the Cubs. I was very upset with the team for loosing on my birthday. How dare they. And being the stubborn kid that I was, I went on to devote my anger at them all in vain as the Mets became the Miracle Mets and won their first World Series.

The Yankees stunk back then. But I always did seem to gravitate towards rooting for the underdog in my life. How was I supposed to know that this was just a lull and that the team I picked was before and would someday become again the proud winners that the Yankees almost always are.

Since my childhood I have continued to root for the Yankees despite there defence of my usual "underdog" criteria for a team that I root for. But usually I am grateful for my "mistake" back then that got me onto the band wagon while it was in the repair shop.

Anyway- I always sort of love the Mets in a funny way. In 1986 I totally embraced that team and loved the way that they won the World Series (through the legs of Bill Buckner and the Red Sox).
I have also loved the way that the Mets lose. The wheels seem to always come off and it is almost comical when this happens. This year has been a sad joke because there is nothing funny about everyone on the team getting hurt. Until now of course. Met 3rd Baseman David Wright got hit in the head with a pitch last month, and went on the DL for the first time in his career. Last night he returned to the line up. But the Mets were not going to take any chances at him getting hit in the head again. So they provided him with a special batting helmet to insure that if he does get hit again, there will be a maximum of protection.
Hmmm....to me it just seem like a much bigger target.
But sometimes being a target is what the New York Mets seem to do best....
DK

World's Greatest Dad

2009-08-29T23:23:00.006-04:00

A year or so ago I went to this sample sale. Our friends
run this ceramics business and and to help out the elementary school, they
donated their entire inventory of samples to the school to be sold.
This husband and wife team had built a huge business out of selling coffee cups and dishes with cleaver sayings on them. And although I like there products, I walked around the school cafeteria at least a couple of dozen times looking over the hundreds of samples and still could not find anything there that day that struck my fancy.
And then I saw "IT." I stumbled upon this giant coffee mug in teal and white with big letters that said "You are a Wonderful Father ...and an Excellent Husband!"
Well I snapped that sucker up before anyone else could get their hands on it and ran around showing off to all of our school friends the cleaver and poignant gift that I had just bought for myself. I found this to be incredibly funny even though I think that no body else did.

Tonight I saw a movie that I would recommend to anyone who likes my jokes.
The movie stars Robin Williams as Lance Clayton, a single-father-high school English-teacher-failed-novelist whose career would be on the down hill slide had he ever had any success in the first place. His son Kyle (Played by Daryl Sabara) is an incredible jerk who wants to do nothing other than hang out in his room and beat off looking at the most grossest pron he can find. He seems to enjoy sex involving shit and piss although the closest he has ever come to a date is masturbating in front of his computer, which he does while strangling himself to heighten the experience. Things go bad and he ends up killing himself. You can not even feel sorry for the kid because he is such an blight on everyone from his father to his friends from school.
But Lance can't let his loser son leave the earth in such a loser fashion, so he channels his writing skills and authors a suicide note that seems to capture the pain and isolation that Lance feels from the steady stream of rejection letters that he gets for his failed novels, and from having to live with a thankless and awful son who never had any empathy for anyone.

The suicide note gets published in the school newspaper and captures the imagination and sadness of all of the students who rightfully had despised Kyle for being the jerk that he was. But in the prism of the tragedy and the touching note, the students all rally around the lonely English teacher. Lance has been in an on again off again relationship with the school's sexy art teacher (Alexi Gilmore) and the fallout of the tragedy has brought her closer to him. To seal the deal Lance provides her with a post mortem diary that his son supposedly kept. This too is written to capture the hardship of going it alone, and, due to an overly zealous grief counselor, the diary is reproduced and distributed to all of the students whom have begun to build a shrine to Kyle, their fallen hero.

Lance winds up on an Opera style show and is offered a chance to finally publish his books. But this movie, which was written and directed by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, surprises by disrupting the obvious Hollywood endings. And only at the end of the movie do we get to see Robin Williams look comfortable in his skin, as Lance finally figures out that maybe the life of a lonely loser that was his up until now was his because he actually kind of liked it. It wasn't nearly as confusing and disingenuous as the life that came with all of of that attention.

I am reminded of understated and funny abortion movie Citizen Ruth (1996), that starred Laura Dern. In that movie as in this none, flawed figures who are not really capable of handling the huge responsibility are thrown into the center of an American shitstorm over issues that are so divisive that they can't help but look comical even without the dull charaters there to set the comedy in motion. Let's face it, Americans on the whole have never been very good at dealing with the really tough issues. Particularly when they are to be tackled by a large group. World's Greatest Dad is a very funny movie about very uncomfortable things. Not necessarily the suicide, but how we all seem to want something to make us feel better, no matter how trite and stupid it is.

And by the way, you should see how happy I look in mornings these days, now that I have my half full "Wonderful Father" coffee mug to drink from.

DK

TED KENNEDY-farwell

2009-08-26T22:19:00.002-04:00

I am going to miss Ted Kennedy. And I honestly feel a bit of worry about how we will manage as a nation without him. His personal life was tragically flawed, but I never doubted his public policies and stances and always felt proud of what he stood for. He had the courage to speak for "liberal" ideals even when the conservative bent of this country became so fashionable. And he was ahead of so many with his outcry over the foolishness of the war in Iraq and in his support of Barak Obama and his attempts to get all people access to health care and education.
I will miss him and hope that he has left a legacy that will endure, because it is his kind of thinking that is the greatest hope for all of us as a nation of empathy and leadership.

SUMMER PICTURE SHOW

2009-08-24T07:27:00.004-04:00

REPEAT OFTEN

SHITTY MONEY

HERD MENTALITY

Dog Days

2009-08-21T08:16:00.002-04:00

I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday. We were catching up on our summers.
I was telling my friend that I had just spent the last week or so building giant crates to load up with my art work to send to France. That up until that start of the crate building project I was humming along making my new work and feeling awfully good about myself. But as I started to make these giant boxes with the oppressive heat and humidity on my back, I was beginning to get more and more depressed and self defeated. And I was telling my friend that with it being August with all of the rest of the world seemingly off on their vacations I was feeling more insignificant than ever. And , I was telling my friend that while I had been so patient and kind, once, in the middle of this brutal week of hot weather, I had to ask someone who owed me a bit of money for a very long time to pay me, and was told that I was a very pushy and aggressive pain in his ass, that I was beginning to wonder how it was that I work really hard and do rediculous things t
like make my own god damn crates for my work, that I am treated like such an asshole.

Anyway- my friend reminded me that this is in fact August. And now that my crates are off to France that I should take it easy. Relax. Veg out in some air conditioning.And don't take things so personally from the guy who begrudgingly paid me. ANd be happy to build crates because at least my work has some place to go...

Good advice. I think that in this instance, I really do deserve a vacation.
I've got to get my head screwed on straight again for the fall...
DK

Pot Belly's are way cool.

2009-08-13T21:17:00.004-04:00

Did ya see the article in the NYTimes Style Section today?
The one by Guy Trebay? It's Hip to be Round.

So according to the piece, Hipster Dudes in Williamsburg are now sporting bellies.
Brooklyn ' Kramdens. It is a sign of totally cool oneness with one's oneness to sport a paunch. I just love the New York Times and there ability to generate a story even if there isn't a story to be told. I mean, come on! It is hip to be a chubby dude. THis is not news to me. Let me just say that I have been sporting a Kramden for years and years ago I was using Ralph Kramden as my Brooklyn Alter ego, measuring myself against his pathos.
Listen here NYTimes, get to the back of the bus for Pete's sake.
DK

DRINKING BUDDIES

2009-08-11T08:35:00.001-04:00

I went out last night with a couple of old drinking buddies of mine last night. The three of us all out there looking to chill out on a blistering hot night. What used to be a night that guaranteed multiple rounds and packs of cigarettes and getting home in the wee hours was replaced by 2 of the 3 of us sipping seltzers and the third being hampered by the lack of encouragement. In other words it was not that late of a night. But I still got home after midnight and this morning I am walking around like I have a super hang over, taking an extra hour or so just to get out of the house.

When I was young and used to do a lot of drugs, I used to say that I would keep going and taking drugs was OK so long as I got myself out of bed in the morning and showed up to do a full day of work.
Once getting out of bed became a problem, I weaned myself and moved on.

This morning I am sitting here wondering what it is that I have to give up if I am going to have to be so tired in the morning. Maybe I should just switch to tap water.

DK

OUT ON THE TOWN

2009-08-05T13:36:00.005-04:00

I went out for dinner the other night with some friends of my wife. People
she knows, but hasn't seen since law school. These folks live in Southern California, but they keep and apartment on the Upper East Side, where the wife spends a lot of time.
SHe says she hates the West Coast and got a place here, on the same floor of the same building as her High School best friend whom also joined all of us for dinner.

Anyway- these folks were real lushes. All three of them probably have 5-10 years on me and my wife but they still drink like they are still in school. We met a restaurant where the waiters and bar tenders all knew them. And they all kept on ordering different colorful concoctions
to drink. Much of the conversation was about law school folks whom I never ever heard of, but also there were discussions of bars around town and bar tenders. They had bar tenders who not only knew their drinks, but also their drinking rules (Gin during the day light hours for example). Total alcoholics! People after my own heart. I sat there and pounded my seltzers one -after-another hoping to get some kind of buzz or something. The drinks kept on coming along with bottles of wine and many courses of food.

I told these folks about how I had been so sick as a dog last summer and how I had to give up drinking and smoking because my liver was not working and I made sure they knew
that even though I haven't had a drink in a long while, I still held drunks in the highest regard. And that even though I still haven't had a drink since my liver came through it's full recovery, I wasn't some New-Born-postalcoholic -program thumping whiner. I still miss the bar culture....

Then I told them the little story about my son, whom while walking over to the comic book store with me recently , told me that he "missed the drunk Dad..."
I told them that I asked my kid what exactly he missed about that version of me, and he said that I always seemed "to be fat and happy..."

I swear the women were almost in tears. A white sparkle came from the wife's eye.

Before I used to run around all the time drinking and smoking like there was no tomorrow, up until I got really sick and thought that maybe my time was up.
That maybe there really was no tomorrow. THank god I am healthy, but I missed the old care free days. I just wish that all that care free and easy living wasn't so hard on my body, not to mention my check book.
DK

Cheap Laughs- NOT FUNNY.

2009-08-03T23:06:00.004-04:00

I have never been good at telling jokes and I have always frowned upon the cheap laugh. I have considered myself to be something a a satirist and have always gone for the deeper more penetrating kind of humour even if it was at the expense of being all that funny.

But I have to relate what happened to me today because it was just plane funny for no other reason than it involved fat people and foreigners.

Today I went to the gym on 14th Street. I did a Pilate's class and really stretched out my core. Anyway, after my hot shower I went upstairs to the street and decided to grab a bus up 6th Ave. I had a lot to do and I was tired from working out.

So I am lucky. I see a bus sitting there on the corner of 6th and W15th and I run across the street the second the light changes and just get on the bus.

It turns out that the bus was taking a long time because just after I found my seat, I discovered that the driver was going to help some poor guy in a wheel chair get off the bus. So this guy in the wheel chair is huge. He was fat as a farm animal. And he has this electric wheel chair. One of those 3-wheel models that are meant to get people around on the street and in their small kitchens. The chair is metallic red and also must have weighed half a ton.

The guy on his chair gets onto the unfolding stair case in the back and the driver lowers him to the street. The platform cantilevers so far down that the rmp under it can't open. The guy is too fat to get off the bus.

So the driver asks everyone to get up who is on the passenger side and lean towards the West side of the street. No good.
Then there is this old man sitting behind me. A foreigner with a heavy Eastern European accent. He starts talking.
"Oh thees powerful Eunited Stets. What a powerful nation."
"Oh yees, the pooblic transportation of theese powerful country. What a joke."
"this country is a joke. It is over for this country..."

And I start to think about the giant fat people in the movie Wall-W who ride around in chairs in the spaceship, drinking out of giant big gulp cups as there skeletons entropy.

So this guy across the isle starts yelling at the old man, "Say one more word and I am warning you..."
"Shut the fuck up old man. I live in this country and if you don't like it I will make you leave..."

Finally this dispatcher from the MTA comes up to the bus and finds out what is going on. He tells the driver to pull away from the curb and leave the poor schmuck in the wheel chair on the street where there would be enough clearance to open the ramp.
The driver drives 1/2 a block. The arguments stop as we've made progress and the driver stops to let the guy off in the middle of the street. Then thee bus dispatcher tells the driver,

"go express to 42nd and then put this bus out of service."
1/2 the passengers get off wasting even more of our fucking time.

45 minutes later I am home.
I went from feeling totally great about my day to totally despondent in less time than it took to do my class. Maybe that Polish guy was right.
But thank god for the cheap laughs....
DK

BEER SUMMIT WAS AESTHETICALLY DUMB

2009-07-31T07:04:00.007-04:00

BEER SUMMIT WAS DUMB, AESTHETICALLY SPEAKING. But maybe effective. The so-called summit arranged by
Barack Obama to diffuse the fallout of the arrest of the Harvard professor (Henry Lewis Gates Jr, for breaking into his own house), was
flawed and in desperate need of an art director to give this thing some much needed help and authenticity and flavor.

First of all, they should have done this in a bar after work. What a joke to meet up in the Rose Garden around some K Mart looking table and chairs. If they had to do it in the Rose Garden, how about a grill and some hot dogs? Men like to stand when they are in the back yard drinking....
And come on! Beer Mugs?! These guys should have been drinking out of the bottle.
I could live with them having pint glasses for their drinks. But beer mugs!!!
It all looked so goofy and staged.

Here's what I wanted to see:
I want to see these guys gathered round the corner stools of the corner bar after work, drinking up their beers and having a wise-cracking bartender looming near by bringing them the next rounds and taking the money out of piles of cash sitting in front of these guys. And for some real flavor, I wanted to see the cop in uniform, with his gun on his belt, tipping back his bottle of Bud.
And how about a Marlboro for Mr. President? Go for it.

I was glad to see that Joe Biden turned up to down a non-alcoholic beverage. Turns out he doesn't drink. Hmmm. (There goes that excuse Joe.)

Having said all of this, maybe the summit was a success.
I could not help but smile when I read the quote of
Mr. Gates Jr. when the summit was over....
He said of Sgt. James Crowley (the white cop that busted him);

"...turns out he's not such a bad guy...when he's not arresting you!"

I have to admit after reading this quote I smiled and thought of another President with whom
people seemed to think it would be a fun to have a beer with. "Mission accomplished". I am not thinking about race issues when it comes to this unfortunate episode, anymore..
DK

getting over it

2009-07-31T06:52:00.002-04:00

It is not even August yet and already I have slipped into the
abyss. I do not know what happens to me every summer, but every summer I wind up
in this murky place waiting out for life post-labor day to begin.

This summer was supposed to be different.
The weather has been most un summer-like.
I have a couple of projects that I am working on.
Lots of personal reasons to be motivated and happy and
distracted.

I am going to commit myself to living out the next month without
complaint or boredom.

I am going to make myself a little promise here to
ignore my August swoon. I am going to use my computer and make a calendar page
that has all of August printed out on it with SEPTEMBER* written
across the top.

I am tired of pissing away my summers whining about it.
Turn on the air conditioner and get busy.
That is my mantra for the day.
DK

Summer Reading Suggestion

2009-07-23T06:14:00.003-04:00

I am reading this great book. I am totally enjoying it.
Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys
about this totally fucked up writer/college professor trying to
write a novel as his life spins out of control.
Really tremendous writing here.

Here is a great passage...

"I drank for years, and thenI stopped drinking and discovered the sad
truth about parties. A sober man at a party is lonely as a journalist,
implacable as a coroner, bitter as an angel looking down from heaven. There's something purely foolish about attending any large gathering of men and women without
benefit of some kind of philter or magic dust to blind you and weaken
your critical faculties. I don't mean to make a big deal out of sobriety, by the way. Of all the modes of human consciousness available to the modern consumer I consider it to be the most overrated."

Thank good this is a book all about constant drinking and pot smoking and cigarettes and men chasing after loose women and the next party, or it would be unreadable for sure.

DK

Summer Show

2009-07-17T12:53:00.002-04:00

Hey-
I am in a show at Freight and Volume
that opened last night.

542 W24th Street, NYC 10011
M-F 11-6

It is a good show and a cool gallery.
Here is the link...
www.freightandvolume.com

the show is called Heartbreak Hotel.

I think my painting fits in real nice with the theme....

Untitled(Romantic Notions...) 2008

Please stop by if you can.
DK

2009-07-15T16:45:00.003-04:00

Summer of Discontent....
I hate summer usually and this one, despite all of the great weather, is
no exception. I somehow way back then seemed to get onto an academic calender, despite my complete lack of interest in school.
And so for me, my summers are spent waiting around for September.
Back in the day, when I was back in school. I
could at least have some mindless summer job to distract me.
I had jobs flipping burgers and working in a bar, I rode a bike
as a bike messenger, and worked in a sign shop. Oh sure there were others, but what all of these summer jobs seemed to include was making new and temporary friends and
drinking huge volumes of alcohol and spending my nights forgetting all about what ever it was that I had wasted my entire day doing.
The summers slipped by quickly and I didn't seem to have the time to stand around and pine for September.
It is only since I started having an after school life
and no longer had my summers "off" that I have began to find this time of year to be slow and hot and boring and
a period of time wasted waiting for the first day of school....
DK

Examining the Navel

2009-07-09T20:33:00.003-04:00

So here is some good news. My show got a really nice write up (so I am told) in Le MOnde.
The big newspaper in Paris. I think that I have translated the review well enough to say that the guy really liked my work. It is funny but I have this friend here in New York who often writes reviews for the New York Times and I have been having a little back-and-forth regarding my show and Paris and the Art World, etc recently. I don't want to read to into things and take things too personally but sometimes the tone of the emails that I have gotten have been on the defensive and putting down the French and Paris in some attempt to maybe temper my enthusiasm. Or maybe this was just
banter and I am taking things personally when they are not meant to be that way.
But in an attempt to understand things better on my own I am going to share the final back-and-forth here because it really revealed things to me that maybe I should have known, or did already know and didn't want to think to much about...
I will pick it up in the middle ...
Here goes:

SUBJECT: Nice Review

There are probably fewer galleries to cover in
Paris, and I would imagine that art reviews also
get a bigger percentage of their daily paper?
Just a guess. But NYC, where there are
probably around 800 galleries (just a guess
but a slightly educated one) things are spread more thinly.

I always thought the house was just to look cool,
but also to amplify the sense of danger.

[reference to the North by Northwest mention in my review]

SUBJECT: Re: Nice Review

I just think it is funny, after all of my hard work, to finally get some
nice words of praise in the paper of record (of France) and
too not even be able to read the article because I don't speak the language.
I think it is great irony,

David

SUBJECT Re. Re: Nice Revie

That is funny! I never even thought of it that
way. You can use it in future. The book looks
great, by the way [SNAKE OIL]

I think it's always hard when work is funny or
appears to be light for people to see its
essential gravitas. I feel it's often a problem
for me, for instance. But it will all come out
in the wash, as your career is obviously building
in a very good way.

The book looks great, by the way!

Best -

Anyway- I always thought that humor was the strength of my work...not its weakness.

I hope that my friend is not offended that I used the transcripts here, but it was really to reveal things more clearly for me. But if so- Se la vie - as the French say.
Or was that the Italians?
DK

A tribute to MJ from way back when

2009-07-08T23:08:00.005-04:00

Here is a version of a video that I made back around 1998- 2000.
I was always a big Off The Wall fan.

Anyway- this is sort of a truncated version here for the blog.
I also just put this version up on Youtube...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDcO9ErmtI4
All the best, DK

INSPIRED

2009-07-04T00:22:00.003-04:00

While I was in Paris I spent about 4 days locked in the basement of this gallery.
I had a show to put together, so things like seeing the sights was completely not happening. Anyway, after I finally got the show together my wife and my son came over to Paris to visit and we took some time and ran around and saw the sights.
We did the Louve and the Eiffle Towwer and we went and saw the Impressionists' paintings over at the D'Orsay.
We had been having this on going discussion about what my son was going to do with his summer vacation, and after we walked out of the D'Orsay my son announced that he wanted to spend the entire summer over in my studio making paintings and carving stones into sculptures. He had a whole list of things that he wanted to make and my wife looked at me and was like so proud of him and excited for his new focus and designs for his future.
I was thinking more like, "No fucking way " am I going to have to try to entertain this kid for an entire summer. I mean I have work to do.
Listen, don't give me this shit that I am some kind of monster and bad father. I have probably spent far more time with my son already than I ever spent with my own old man combined. I want to encourage him to do all kind of cool things. But I have work to do.
And besides, I mean before we had gone to France, I was hoping to convince him to go to Sleep-Away.

DK

bigger than Elvis'

2009-07-01T17:45:00.002-04:00

Another tragic loss to an icon from my youth....

Karl Malden dead at age 97.
RIP
DK

INSTALLATION SHOTS-Paris

2009-06-27T07:18:00.004-04:00

I am still enjoying the warm glows of my show from Paris. I wanted to post a few pictures of the installation...
The front window and the project space.

Paris Trip

2009-06-23T20:14:00.002-04:00

I am back from Paris. The show was really amazing. I build this wild installation in the gallery.
Anyway- I have returned to NYC and for the first time ever in my life I am starting to really question if this is the right place for me to live anymore.
Paris was such a great city. The life lived out there on the sidewalks was something that I have not seen in New York in quite some time. Not as pervasive and integral to the culture here as it is there.

Anyway- I have another project to do in Paris (and then Lyon) in September.
So I am on my way back there already.
Please check out the link to the gallery to see more of the show. i am really excited.
DK
http://laurentgodin.com/exhibition_detail.php?id_exhibition=39

ROCK BOTTOM at Galerie Laurent Godin, Paris

2009-06-18T02:42:00.003-04:00

ROCK BOTTOM opens in Paris at
Laurent Godin on Saturday June 20 §-!.
Anyone who is in the neighborhood should please stop by.

The show looks greqt.
Checkout the link for images:
laurentgodin.com

Paris is great but
I picked the wrong city to be in while experimenting with not drinking and smoking...

XO DK

Double Shot

2009-05-29T07:11:00.002-04:00

2009-05-27T06:04:00.000-04:00

new drawing

2009-05-25T20:40:00.000-04:00

I like this piece

2009-05-19T11:29:00.001-04:00

I hope that I don't seem like I am pandering the French with this drawing ...

DK

Sorryass Disclaimer

2009-05-14T08:33:00.002-04:00

I've been rather delinquent about blogging recently. Lots has been going on. And I am afraid
that the posts are going to be put up here in bursts and stops for some time now.

I am going to have a show in Paris in June at
Galerie Laurent Godin.

The work needs to be shipped out in about 2-3 weeks. So bare with me. i will do my best to keep at this. But for now,
thanks for your patience.

DK

Art is the Drug

2009-05-04T13:16:00.003-04:00

I haven't been writing much recently. In fact, recently I have not been a very word oriented guy. Even the work that I've been making in my studio doesn't really rely on words. I've been drawing pictures and coloring them in and that has been totally satisfying as well.

I have been really broke again and this is no fun. I looked up at the beginning of the month and noticed that I was down to an embarrassingly low balance in the ol' checking account. And aside for some art sales that are out there waiting to be completed, I don't really have much coming in on the horizon. Am I worried? Not really.
I am feeling really good about things and the way things are going.

Why? Because I am on drugs.
I have a show coming up in a fancy European city with a fancy European Gallery, and it is like mainlining drugs for me. I have a project right there on the front burner, who cares how broke I am. Art is my drug and it is the grand illusion. It is the ultimate distraction.

And isn't that what art is supposed to be all about in the first place? Isn't that what people love about art when they buy a painting or go to the museum. It is to get distracted. To be able to get away from it all.

My art is a drug and it is a distraction for me and anyone who happens to buy it.
I just wish it was as highly addictive for those who collect my work as it's been for me.
DK

Birthday Well Wishes

2009-04-25T16:43:00.005-04:00

To day is my birthday. I turned 46 years old today. 46. I have to say that I have never imagined myself being 46 years old. It is a strange number.
I got all kinds of birthday well wishes from my Facebook friends which was really very strange. Kind. I usually keep a low profile about my birthday, but there it is on my Facebook page.

Sometimes I hate my birthday. Like the year I turned 39, I was so depressed and angry about getting older and leaving my 30's behind. 40 was a piece of cake but last year was terrible. Turning 45 really freaked me out and I was very unhappy. I have a much better attitude about this one. Oh sure, I am on the down hill slide heading towards 50. And yes, I realize that even if I am lucky enough to get to be 90 years old before I die, I am already more than half way there. But 46 feels good to me.

A couple of years ago I started attending this "boot camp" and doing all kinds of crazy work out stuff. Maybe that was purely a function of being afraid of getting old, but I would get up at 6 AM and go run around like a 20 year old for an hour, even though I would still be drinking and smoking like a 20 year old too. I thought I could handle it and I was strong. Last summer when I started to have serious liver failure I was at the beginning of a contract with the boot camp guys. I thought I was terrible dehydrated before I found out that my liver had stopped working like it used to. SO the guys at the boot camp suspended my membership and now, this month I have returned to the gym. It has been going good and today I went for a Saturday morning workout. I told this one woman there that it was my birthday. When I told here I was 46, her eyes almost popped out of her head. I am not sure that she had ever met someone THAT old. But really, she said, she never would have guessed I was over 39! That sounds pretty young from where I am sitting these days.
All in all it has been a pretty good birthday.
DK

2009-04-23T06:28:00.003-04:00

Here is another dream...
I dreamt that I was an American living in Nazi Germany during World War II.
I was living below the radar but I was in fact living surrounded by German solders.
I was living with a bunch of other prisoners of war.
There was a plan to escape. A train to catch at the station. We all had fake papers and cloths to wear. Very much like that old Steve McQueen movie, The Great Escape.
It was the time and day to make our escape. I was dressed in a woolen suite with a hamburg hat. I looked in a mirror and I had red and blue paint all over my face and neck.
I had to sneak back into the barracks to wash. I had to slip past the guards and I did not speak a word of German. I had to get past a particularly Arian looking guy and I was terrified as he said something to me and I grumbled a response. I was afraid he would start a conversation.
I was in the bathroom washing my face and hands and I could not get all of my mess off. But it was time to go.
I could hear the train whistle and had only moments to get to the station....
Then the alarm went off and I had to get my son off to school.
DK

Baseball Stories- Passing the tradition From Father to Son to Father to Son

2009-04-22T21:52:00.005-04:00

I went to the New Yankee Stadium last Sunday. I decided it was for some reason really important to take my son to a game there in the first week of the New Stadium.
My son doesn't give a shit about baseball, but I felt compelled to take him anyway.
When I was a kid my dad didn't know or care anything about sports, but every once in a while he would get some tickets from a client and feel compelled to take me to a game. Sort of like forced fed bonding was the way I saw it even back then when I was in my youth. I mean my dad did not give a shit about sport, he once told me that he wasn't sure, but he thought that he might have met Babe Ruth once...
There is a funny/tragic story that I like to tell that one time my Dad was driving me to a game at the Stadium. There we were stuck in traffic. Neither of us really comfortable with each other or having anything to say. My Dad had the radio playing and suddenly that song, "The Cat's in the Cradle with a silver spoon, little boy grew into the man in the moon....When you coming home Dad? I don't know when..." You know the rest. Whell the silence in the car was totally palpable and I just couldn't take all of the irony so I started talking just to say anything, trying to start up a conversation. And I remember my Dad pointed at the radio and said to me, "Shhh- I am listening!"
Anyway- such is the ethos that compelled me to take my own son to a game. He had a really good time. The Yankees won which was important to him. Although, even though he really doesn't know much about baseball, he's told me for years now that he is really a Red Sox fan. He asked me on the way to the game when I was going to take him to see the Sox? NEVER son. I am trying as best I can. But you have got to be out of your mind if you think I am going to contribute to some awful habit that you are starting now...
DK

I WANT TO KNOW WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME.

2009-04-18T02:55:00.002-04:00

I want to know what is wrong with me. Last night I went to a dinner for this prestigious Art Magazine. They had this big fundraiser and I was asked to contribute some works. I was asked to create a special project for them, to lend my name and my talent to them and help them. Of course I said YES. I did this project and I was told how wonderful I am by all of the staff. I went to a huge cocktail party and I was asked to stay on for the exclusive dinner part of the program as “thanks” for lending my help. Throughout the evening I was told how great the project turned out by so many of the guests.
There at the dinner was this art dealer who once shunned me, and whom I had hopped would give me time of day now that she saw me there in this new light. WELL. I could not have been more mistaken. There I sat at a table for the guests whom had contributed their sweat. This art dealer came and greeted every other artist at the table but seemed to make a point of avoiding me and then, later in the same evening, when I said “Hello” in passing, was so physically bothered by this that my wife commented that I must have done something to have offended her. I must have done something. I mean, I have no fucking clue what I could have done, but I must have done something to bother this woman when all that I have tried to do was to be the kind of artist who made the kind of work that this woman would want to sell; to be the kind of artist she would find irresistible and want to associate herself with. Instead, I have alienated myself from her with that being the total opposite effect of what it was that I really wanted to achieve. I just want to know what the fuck is wrong with me. How come I am so bad at what it is that I want to be good at and why is it that I am so fucking good at being terrible at what it is that I want so badly to do well.

Here is a nice comment from the NYTimes.com proof

2009-04-16T13:36:00.002-04:00

#7 –s. “Proofreaders are no fun to drink with.” Nice pun there!

I’ve loved Proof, particularly the writings of David Kramer and Sacha Z. Scoblic. Kramer because he just has a fascinating mind and communicates his perspective on the world so warmly and with such humility, Scoblic because hers were most often the entries at which I laughed out loud in (self-)recognition.

Cheers!
— FJP

It sounded nice and totally lifted my spirits.
Thanks.
More at:
http://proof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/last-call-readers-speak/
DK

Go See GUEST OF CINDY SHERMAN

2009-04-16T09:41:00.009-04:00

Not to come off as a movie reviewer but I want to write about a movie that I saw last night, and, of course, about me.
Last night I went to see Paul H-O's Guest of Cindy Sherman. Paul H-O is this irreverent New York City Art World hanger-on er who back in the 1990's, when the art market was sliding into oblivion during an economic downturn, started a Cable Access TV show called Gallery Beat. Paul forsakes his art career to put all of his energies into this show which, to paraphrase him, maybe 40,000 people watch. But his infectious energy and from-the-hip candor leads him to meet all in the art world just as the economy takes shape and the Art World goes on a joy ride that takes it out of "homier" So-Ho and into Corporate, and humorless Chelsea.

Anyway- Paul somehow gets the attention of Cindy Sherman, the great Artist/icon/photographer and does a multi-part interview with her. Sherman is known as a recluse when it comes to the media, but she provides Paul with total access. They soon are smitten with each other and Paul and Cindy become something of an item just as her career leaps from stardom to super-rock-star Madonna-like status. For a while the ride is lots of fun, but soon Paul is becoming uncomfortable with his role (or lack there of) . Paul is sick of being seated separately at dinners (with place cards saying Guest of C.S.) and begins to look for an outlet.

As a chronicler of things over almost a decade, Paul does what he does best and carries his camera with he tries to figure out this dilemma. His access is now even greater through his connections to Sherman, so Paul goes on to interview David Furnish (otherwise known as Elton John's husband) and other spouses of uber-famous people as they all commiserate about things like getting cropped out of pictures by the paparazzi. It is really sad, funny and Paul is endlessly infectious.

A nice movie for anyone who has been around the New York art scene for the past 10-15 years.

Which is where I come in...I watched the movie and fully expected to see myself walking past the background of any number of shots. But what was most telling and most articulate about the film was Paul's compelling description of how his Cable Access show went from running joke to "Get the fuck out of my gallery" once the art world started to crank in the money. It seems that no body liked or wanted to hear anyone say anything about the emperor's new clothes once the money rainstorm started to rage.

All of a sudden it was totally clear to me what happened to me and my art career over the last 10 years. All of my best attempts to be a gate crasher were appeased and then ignored, hoping I would just go away. Cindy Sherman, being a great artist, knew damn well that having Paul H-O around would keep her sane and grounded during this crazy head trip. And Paul, being a shrewd street smart guy got as close to the center as possible until he was finally asked to leave.

I've been saying for years now that the 90's was the best time in New York that I can remember. I got to see the 1980's up-til now. I am glad that money is leaving the scene. Oh-sure, I only wish I had got some before the faucet was turned off. But now that it's off, everyone can get down and dirty again. And I do better when everyone around me isn't turning away because I am such a slob.

I just have to keep reminding myself not to get too bitter about not getting what I never had, and start working again. Hopefully Paul H-O will keep on doing just the same thing too.
DK

PS- Check out the NYTimes.com opinion page for the Proof section. Nice comments there from the readers Re: My Posts.

Weekend Art Show

2009-04-10T11:00:00.004-04:00

and

and

Enjoy...They are all recent. 2009
Thanks. DK

Weekend Art Show

2009-04-10T10:58:00.000-04:00

Dreaming Large

2009-04-09T09:54:00.002-04:00

Last night I had this dream. In my dream I was a bad guy, sort of a street thug.
I dressed like a kid from a bad neighborhood, with gold teeth and gaudy jewlery and a bright
red track suit with something like Southpole or Ecko written is script across the chest.

But there was trouble in these parts and the whole community had come together and everyone needed some help. For some reason people were making sandwiches and somehow in my dream, these sandwiches, when at a certain proper thickness, would please someone even bader than me and make all of our collective problems go away.

I was handed a sandwich that was about 1/2 an inch too thin and was told by some desperate people that that was all there was. The sandwich was not going to be enough to stop the wave of shitstorm that was heading right our way.

So I reached into the pocket of my red sweatpants and pulled out a thick wad of bills folded in half and put it on top of the Ham and put the bread on top of that and BOOM! We had a thick sandwich.

I wrapped the sandwich in paper and handed it to some starry eyed kid and I was a hero across the land.
Then suddenly I noticed that I still had my wad of bills. I had secretly slipped it back into my pocket. I saved the day and I was still holding onto the loot.

I woke up totally pleased with myself...
I have no idea what that was all about, but not a bad little story.
DK

NY TImes.com- Proof

2009-04-08T07:37:00.002-04:00

I just wanted to send you a link:
http://proof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/last-call-dispatches/#kramer

As you may know,
For the past few months I have been contributing to the NY Times on-line
section called Proof: Alcohol and American Life
This morning they posted my last contribution
as the series has come to an end.

Hope you enjoy it, and there are also 3 others in the archive.

David Kramer

GW Bush appears in Public...and is Booed

2009-04-07T16:02:00.003-04:00

I just read that G.W. Bush was booed loudly throwing out the first pitch fro the
Texas Rangers yesterday.
Finally he's even unpopular in his own damn state. Maybe we are learning something, even if it is too little too late.
Someone whould have thrown a shoe at him or something.

I heard he threw a strike though.
DK
Link: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/30/bush-booed-nationals/

GM Rally Caps- I am not inspired...

2009-04-06T21:59:00.004-04:00

I was watching TV tonight. I hardly ever do.
But anyway I was watching this ad for
GM, and they were saying that America is ready for a come back!
That it is time for us to put on our "rally caps"!

GOD I hope that we don't give any more money to that company
if that is what they are coming up with to get them
back on track.
It is just tragic really.
RALLY CAPS!

Oh-my lord, America is in trouble.
WHo are they trying to Rally over here? Us or them...
DK

RED CARPET TREATMENT

2009-04-04T14:08:00.004-04:00

http://www.thegiganticmovie.com/

Last night I went to the NYC Premier of
Gigantic
a movie by Matt Aselton and starring John Goodman and
Ed Asner and Paul Dano and Zoe Deschenal...

First off I recommend it!
Secondly, my artwork is all over the movie in the scenes at John Goodman's apartment.
So it was like I WAS IN THE MOVIE.
Last night I escorted my lovely wife to the premier and
to the gala after party.
Anyway- Please go see it.
It is Matt Aselton's and MY first film... and it is really good.

DK

ANTI SOCIAL COMMENTARY / POLE HUGGERS /BOOM BOXes

2009-04-03T07:45:00.006-04:00

A couple of years ago I was talking to a friend about my affection for Belgium, a country that I had been visiting frequently on business. My friend had never been there and asked what was so special about this tiny country. I said that I really loved the people. I said that although they were just like the Dutch in terms of their roots, only they hang out in bars sharing cigarettes, and drive cars, where as the Dutch get stoned and ride bicycles....by themselves.
What I was getting at was that the Belgians were partiers and entertaining while the Dutch were stoic
loners. Take your pick but I prefer the crowd at the bar.

Anyway-I have been noticing a change in New Yorkers recently that I have the feeling is becoming a trend, and I really do not like it. Since the advent of the unlimited ride Metrocard, I ride the subways maybe 4-6 times a day on the average. And for years I have seen that people tend to create their own space just by not looking at anyone else directly, or just reading. But everyone always seemed totally conscious of each other and, sometime without even looking up, would make room for the fellow passenger on board.
What I am noticing now is something that I call POLE-LEANERS. Or POLE-HOGS. I have begun to notice in the past year that now when you get on a train that it is totally normal for someone to get on a crowded-standing-room-only car and lean their entire body against a pole. What is basically happening is that the new-comer to the car will simply ignore the environment around hog up the whole pole and leave others to reach high or around them so that we won't fall over during the thrust of the moving train. I have even had people lean on poles right on top of my pole-clutching hands, ignoring my touch as they make themselves more comfortable...
I find this behavior to me my particular pet-peeve and I have been noticing that it seems to be perpetrated almost always by some "kid" wearing an iPod.
What bothers me here is NOT so much that I have to adjust myself in deference to some unthinking or self centered ass,
but is something that I am afraid is much larger than just someone grooving to music to the exclusions of others. What I am thinking is that what was once a town filled with talkers and opinions is becoming unfriendly and cold. New York is going back to the Dutch in a way .
I don't want to turn into some vigilant weirdo and start confronting the POLE-HOGS, but I do think that maybe it is my duty to get into the face of the tuned out jerk and force them into a little banter. At least while I am trying to pry my hand out from under their leaning body. I'll try to be niice...but I hate these POLE_HUGGING DOUCHEBAGS! And PLEASE! Bring back the BOOM- BOXes. I am tired of having to craning my neck just to see the tiny screen of an iPod to figure out what the fuck I am listening to anyway.
DK

by the way- this is a link that is definately not anti-social...I think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVeqNuHcb-I

New Yorker Cartoons?

2009-04-01T18:58:00.007-04:00

When I was a kid, I had this idea that I wanted to be a cartoonist for the New Yorker.
We always had those magazines lying around the house, and even though I never read them or looked at the photos or had any idea what the magazine pertained to, I was drawn in by the whimsical covers and read all the cartoons.

I've never really done anything about this desire. I moved on and became an artist, and never really looked back with any remorse that I didn't fulfill this childhood dream. Much like I have lived without any regret about not becoming a Farmer or a baseball player or an astronaught or the fucking President, for that matter. You grow up and get a real job and that's that. I never said as I kid that I wanted to be an artist. But that seemed like the best use of my talent and skills.

Anyway- over the past few years people often say to me that my artwork reminds them of New Yorker cartoons. ANd recently I have been thinking more and more about this.
So I am going to do a little experiment here and see if maybe there is some way that I can pursue this...

Here are some recent drawings that I have made and there New Yorker equivalents...
Maybe it is a round peg into a square hole, but I think maybe I'm sitting on something here that I should be trying to take advantage of.
Just an idea...
DK

2009-03-30T09:51:00.000-04:00

Here's a short interview that is on another blog...
Thanks for checking it out....
www.blanklandzine.blogspot.com

NO DOG IN THIS FIGHT

2009-03-30T09:30:00.002-04:00

Every year I somehow find some friend who works in an office to get me some access to
join in on their NCAA March Madness Pool. I fill out the boxes and pony up the $10 or 20 bucks.
I do this even though I know that I am just throwing away my money , cause I don't know shit about the sport.

This year I don't have a sniff. Not a dog left in this fight. This is really not all that different from the past. It turns out that I have no idea what I am talking about when it comes to sports.

But here is the thing...years ago I got lucky and won a pool. I was still in college and I went to school in Washington DC and hated Georgetowmn and Patrick Ewing and somehow picked Villanova out of spite and ended up wining a pile of money. SO now I am hooked. i still throw my money into the pool even though I know I should just flush the money down the toilet. But winning once has gotten me totally hooked.

Now I am wondering if this behavior is not all that different than my behavior when it comes to how I handle my art career. I mean, I am sitting here right now without anything on my scheduled horizon and I am telling myself, "Just come up with something BIG and you'll be right back in business!" Like I keep telling myself that if I just keep on antiing up, sooner or later I will get dealt a good hand and win all the money on the table.

One of these years I am going to finally decide to sit one of these gambling situations out. But right now I feel like one of those guys in the casino in Vegas looking for the desk where you can go and take some money out off of your credit card.
Because I've had a couple of winning hands in the past, I must get lucky again sooner or later.

DK

Drawing Friday #2

2009-03-27T09:01:00.000-04:00

DK2009

Friday Drawing

2009-03-26T14:02:00.000-04:00

EXPERT IN MY FIELD

2009-03-25T09:38:00.006-04:00

Recently I have had this series things happen to me
where I have been asked by other artists for studio visits or career advice
or have been treated like some sort of expert in my field, and I am not quite sure where all of this change
in perception has really come from. Recently this woman asked me to come over to her
studio for a visit. I was really flattered and of course I said YES. I mean, who wouldn't want to
be told how great you are and generous, just for showing up, while some complete strange tells you her most intimate
secrets and desires. And although I completely played down the value of my expertise, the woman pushed me
for career advice and a how-to as to how-to get a gallery. I had to think fast, so I told her that
the whole trick to getting a gallery was to get someone to know that you exist and what kind of work it is that you do, and then treat them like you have far bigger fish to fry. I said it was all remarkably like dating, and that she should read that book
"THE RULES" and adopt this whole strategy and her career would start to take off like a rocket ship.
I told her she she read up on Dale Carnegie and get a copy of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" and
bone up on all of the self-help books that she could get her hands on.
She asked me if I had anything coming up on my own schedule and I told her that recently I had casually
met the European Art Dealer, and now I was channeling all of my "power of positive thinking" and
using what I had learned from watching "The Secret" DVD and that I am fully expecting to be doing a show with that guy soon.
I left her and walked to the subway and I decided to start walking bow-legged because I thought it would give off the impression to those who saw me that I was really much better endowed than I really am.

You know, when I was a young artist, I was really shy and awkward, and
I would never have had the guts to ask any artist for career advice. So I take a lot of pride that everything
that I have actually been able to accomplish as an artist as it has come completely from my own hard work and difficult lessons learned. As far as being treated like an expert in my field, there is one thing that I really believe that
I have become something of an expert in and that is in learning how to
learn from my mistakes.
My problem is that I am still not all that good
at identifying what it is that I am actually doing right.
DK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TU5uB74IGI
Cheeck out the link above...

Spring Is Here...Time to Stop Hibernating.

2009-03-24T14:19:00.003-04:00

I want to start out by saying that I have been delinquent in my work here. I always feel that if you come right out and admit your mistakes, it doesn't make things better, but it does at least end the name calling and arguing about who is to blame. I admit it...I've been fucking up.
I was thinking that the thing that one might call a prolonged failure to blog would be falling off the wagon. Well. That is what I have done here. ANd now I am back on.
I am going to start writing again. And I hope to be regular. As opposed to irregular.

MArch has been a very interesting month for me. I was very excited about all of the art fair stuff and then the show in LA. All of this kind of got the better of me. I have had a little of that post pardon thing going on. Trying to get myself grounded again so I could get back to work. In the past, I usually never had any dry spells when it came to my work. That is to say, I would drink like crazy during my dry spells and push my way through them. So I guess it is fair to say that my dry spells were pretty wet. I have not turned to drinking this time to get through the relative dry spell that I'd been going through. THis was not so difficult really, but the interesting part is that I have managed to squeeze out the beginnings of some new work and now I don't have the piles of shit lying around like I used to when I was drinking up and prolific. Not to say that there was anything wrong with making large piles of work, mind you....

Anyway- It is nice to be back at work here, and I promise that things are only going to get better.
I hope I haven't lost all of those who have been good enough to check in here over the last few months. I hope to hear from you soon. And I am happy to be back.
DK

WITH A CHERRY ON TOP

2009-03-11T13:18:00.004-04:00

So I wanted to just catch up and report how things went at the art fair this weekend. I was involved in VOLTA-NY.
I had been telling people leading up to the fair that doing an art fair at this time in history, at this moment in the economic shit storm that we are living through, was totally stupid and totally 2006. Art fairs were a thing of the past. A big waste of money. I was hoping that maybe I'd get some attention for what I did and maybe, if I was lucky, sell a couple of things.

Well. The Art Fair was totally like 2006. Miami 2006 as a matter of fact. My drawings were selling like hot cakes and the interest in my work seemed to grow exponentially as the weekend progressed. I had been somewhat upset that a gallery who had been working with me had decided not to include my work at their booth at Armory, but by the end of the weekend, they had heard about the wild fire going on around my work at VOLTA, and I found out that my work was not only up in the booth, but also on the wall of the gallery in Brooklyn. A minor coup by my standards. The other thing that was funny was that my dealer from Brussels had asked his dear friend to work with us at my VOLTA booth. Well, this dear friend was also the wife and partner of a former dealer of my work so suddenly I was back to showing in the fold with people who had left me for dead two years ago. It was quite a come back story if I do say so.

I also ran into a bunch of folks whom I had worked with at a recent gallery that I had bailed out of back in April because I recognized that the dealer was shaddy to say the least. I am sorry to say that all of these people are still trying desperately to get paid by that guy and get their work back. I was really sad for these people but glad that I had good instincts and listened to myself when I cancelled a show and moved on.

I did a performance on Saturday that went really well and sang along to a music video that I had made of Rheinstone Cowboy. The whole weekend was like going to a big high school reunion as I saw folks from all sorts of parts from my past. I even saw an old dealer and his wife from out of town, whom I thought by now had to hate me, and we all made nice and talked about our kids, and this guy's wife even admitted to sneaking a peak at the Toothless Alcoholic Blog every once in a while, while at work.

I told my wife that I was really happy and psyched by all of my successes. And I told her that the best part was that I did it all with out doing any drugs or boozing it up or getting a lap dance. Well she said that she was happy for me, but she didn't see what the big deal was. She said she goes to work every day with needing to drink a sixpack and smoke a pile of cigarettes.
But I still look at tall of this as just some extra mustard on top of what was already a pretty excellent weekend.

DK

Busy/Crazy Week

2009-03-02T06:55:00.001-05:00

Dear Friends,
Next week I have a couple of shows that I am happy to tell you about.
I will be participating in VOLTA- NY

7 W34th Street , NYC ,Thursday March 5-Sunday March 8 1-9pm
This is a solo exhibition of my work
Represented by AEROPLASTICS CONTEMPORARY, BRUSSELS....
and at the Grolsch Bar at VOLTA...
I will doing a performance on Saturday afternoon @ 4:15
for further information please go to these links:
www.voltashow.com and also www.aeroplastics.net

and in Los Angeles....
although I will not be there for the opening
I am pleased to announce:
GUILTY PLEASURES
at
JANCAR GALLERY
961 CHUNG KING ROAD, LOS ANGELES, CA 90012

DAVID KRAMER

Mar 07 to Mar 28, 2009

Image:
Disney
56 " X 46"

It's like the 80's

2009-02-26T23:16:00.003-05:00

Last Saturday I went to New Jersey to see a play. My cousin is getting a MFA at Rutgers and was doing Shakespeare.Anyway-the play was OK. The actors were great. The script left something to be desired. They did the Merry Wives of Windsor which is not one of Shakespeare's biggies.
Anyway- after the show I was talking to my cousin and we were talking
about what she had to do next: how she pretty much had to sit around and worry about the future while waiting to graduate with her degree at the end of June.
I was telling her about how it seemed just like when I got out of Grad School. It was 1987 and the Market had crashed and all the real estate value was going down the drain. The art market was shutting down and what galleries that I had imagined myself showing in while working away as school were suddenly non-existent. Crime was rampant and AIDs made everything seem like it was all over and Reagan made us all feel completely helpless or completely without any help.
I was telling her how strange it was to not have anything in particular to work for and how it was kind of fun and liberating back then. And how every generation is really born into, or spit out onto the best possible moment to be doing what they are doing as long as you maintain this positive spirit and a love for what you are doing.
I was waxing positive and leaving out all the parts about my heavy drug use and borderline alcoholism.
Anyway- I am really optimistic. Right now I am having the best greatest moment of my entire art career and the market is completely dead and I am going broke and killing my credit while I pursue the dream that I've never let go of since I got out of school.
Thank god I married a lawyer or I'd really be up Shit Creek by now. I hope I didn't give her the wrong idea by dishing out the Ol' Pep Talk about the true grit of being an artist. But she is a lot prettier and smarter than I ever was at her age. I sure she will figure out how to find someone to be with who will be supportive of her dream, while still maintaining a little bit of upward mobility.
DK

What We Talk About When We Are Not Talking About Love

2009-02-26T11:50:00.002-05:00

I admit that when all else fails I talk about the weather. I admit that I have reached for the lowest common denominator when bumping into a neighbor or ridding an elevator. Small talk is something that I am not very good at. I often need a little subject matter to get me going. So today is a beautiful day. The very end of February and it feels like the end of March. Cool. Pleasant.
And yet all day long all I can do is complain to anyone willing to listen that this is odd and that the weather shouldn't be this good. Like what the fuck is going on here.
I think the reality is that I am wishing for some bad weather. I mean I like winter to be over with as much as anyone, but my natural calendar and my inner alarm clock are both telling me that I should be suffering from seasonal depression and the winter dull drums. This is the point in time during all winters when I start taking drastic measures and buy airline tickets to get out of town, or become compulsively interested in things like college basketball. Anything to forget it is winter.
Only today, for all intensive purposes is gorgeous. For February, it is simply fabulous.
And yet I keep on finding myself involved in little small talk vignettes, and in each and every case, I can not help myself but be the voice of doom and gloom that this good weather cannot be good for us and that this mild winter is just going to cost us something down the road.
It is boring even for myself.
I am going to have to find something else to talk about when I am making small talk...I have to think of something else to say that lots of people can relate to without serving up the heavy dose of bad attitude... There's got to be something that we all can relate too....

Hey-did you see that Michelle Obama's got the girls doing choirs around the house?
How's that for quick thinking? Only my kid thinks I stupid when I bring up that one.
DK

Just Like Socialized Medicine

2009-02-24T07:31:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I had some emergency dental surgery. I thought I was going to have to do it myself, I was so reluctant to spend any money. You know, stare into the mirror with a pair of pliers and a flashlight and wish that I has an extra set of hands.
I decided to go over to NYU Dental School. I've heard about this for years. You go there and let some students work you over and the price is a fraction of the sticker price you'd pay anyone with a shingle. I mean, I have in the past gone to barber schools to get $5 haircuts in the past and that always seemed adequate. The student barbers were always grateful and tell you things like that they wanted to learn how to cut "White Hair" and other bits and drabs of info that made the whole experience kind of entertainment too boot. I certainly don't blame those guys for my male patterned baldness....
Anyway, I've been having pain in my mouth all weekend and I remember from my last visit to a dentist (not that long ago, actually. I can still remember paying that motherfucker $275 to get his fucking hygienist to clean my teeth.)He looked into the crystal ball (x-rays) and told me I would have a wisdom tooth issue sometime in not to distant future and I guessed that the future is now. So I was not going to go back to see that guy and pay him an arm and a leg to be sent to his friend, the oral surgeon and pay that guy the other arm and leg and tooth just to get the extraction, so I went over to the school.
Going to the school is sort of like getting your mouth worked on in a bus station. There are people milling all about. Cubicles lined up on after another with dentists.
I got my mouth checked out by a cute dentist who had an nice chair-side manner and sent me over to the oral surgeons. There I ran into this steamy Russian woman dentist who claimed to have practiced for years in Moscow before immigrating to NY. She said that training was much better there than here, even though she took my blood pressure and told me that I was having a heart attack which was later corrected by a faculty member. She, with the aide of this guy pried my tooth out, boot on my chest, and shoved a bunch of gauze in my mouth and sent me on my pain-free way all for $95.

Now I know that this isn't exactly socialized medicine but it is probably as close as you can get in New York with out going to the emergency room and giving them a fake mailing address. And having the work done by a woman who grew up behind the Iron Curtain just confirmed my suspicions that this is what it must be like. Not bad. I only wish I could have gotten a prescription for Vicadin. But they seem well aware of their clientele over there, and the type of people willing to experiment with their bodies just too save a couple of bucks.
DK.

FRIDAY night ENTERTAINMENT

2009-02-20T06:48:00.002-05:00

Programing notes:
I will be attempting to to a performance tonight!

Fri 02/20

THE BLOWHOLE THEATER HOLIDAY WINTERLUDE. Put together by Life In A Blender's Don Rauf, this yearly event brings together a variety of eccentric, endocentric and exocentric acts such as accordionists, monologuists, actors and the dreaded singer-songwriter.
I am going to do a little performance here tonight but also Susan Mitchell and the Rest of here gang of Radio Play cohorts will be performing and a host of talented and funny folks. THis is an annual fun event that works it way onto the calendar tonight to celebrate CHristmas' pPast? Present?? Future???
@Barbes 376 9th St. (corner of 6th Ave.) Park Slope, Brooklyn 347 422 0248

Also- coming up soon:
TWO SHOWS
I am going coastal with a show in LA

http://themagla.com/cgi-bin/artmagla/page.cgi?g=Detailed/55.html;opening=1834
and in NYC
@ VOLTA
http://ny.voltashow.com/2767.html
Both are opening the first week of March so I 've been
running around like crazy.

Anyway- Stop in to Barbes if you a around>Love to catch up.
DK

I WISH THERE WAS A PILL I COULD TAKE...

2009-02-18T09:41:00.007-05:00

Come'on. Let's Get Real...

I am not sitting here defending Alex Rodriguez for doing steroids. Lord knows I don't give enough of a shit to lift a finger to type any words that might defend him. But I want to make one observation here and that is, if there was a performance enhancing drug out there that made you better at what you did if you took it, and if you were already great at what you did but this would make you arguably the best and bring to you all of the attention and accolades and riches that come along with being so great at what you did, wouldn't you take it?
I would.
For years I drank to excess because I thought it helped me to be better at my job. I took drugs and did all kinds of
activities that bordered on illegal and at times crossed that boarder because I thought it would help me. Give me insight. Give me an edge or an angle that my contemporaries lacked. I wanted to be the best. I worked my ass off to make myself the best. And I did all of these "bad" things because I thought they helped. And I swear I am not just looking back trying to justify my sloppy mistakes. In fact, I will tell you right now that if I had two nickels to rub together as result of all of my hard work to show you as proof that this strategy actually worked, I would run over to the closest deli and spend them on beer and cigarettes and
anything else that made my cash register ring with sales.

So don't be so hard on A-Rod. Believe it or not, he is only human.
He may not be likable or even all that interesting of a person outside of the ball park,
but he was just trying to get better at what he did. You want to call him a cheater,
fine. He's a cheater. But all the cheating that I've ever done didn't get me into Harvard
so give that guy a little credit. Not that he needs my support.
He can afford his own entourage.
DK

Spring is in the Air

2009-02-17T07:18:00.002-05:00

I know it is only mid February, but all this mild weather has me day dreaming about spring. I know there is still much of winter still to get through. We still have to get all the way through March before I will truly believe that we are out of the woods of snow and shit weather. I just hope that these few beautiful days here in the middle of February don't make those crappy days in March even more unbearable.
Although I wouldn't mind a blizzard or something if it will get us to finally stop wasting our time talking about steroids.
Who really gives a shit at this point? There are plenty of other things to talk about.
And I mean even more than the weather, to..
DK

I recommend

2009-02-11T13:59:00.002-05:00

http://www.hobartpulp.com/minibooks/index.html

Hey-
I have a book recommendation here. And not because I happened to do the cover of the book.
I have never met Mary Miller, nor had I read her work before. BIG WORLD published by HOBART Press from Ann Arbor.
The editor of the book is a great supporter of my work. That's how I ended up doing the cover.
Anyway- the stories in this book are great. They are written in a blend of Raymond Carver meets disaffected young woman who has to deal with life while saddled with the tragedy of being both good at nothing and terribly pretty. Unlike this type of character that Miller continues to write about throughout her stories, Miller is talented. She's a terrific writer with a great handle on details and emotions and the sadness of the human condition.
In one story she writes about being a terrible waitress who only keeps her job by sleeping with her boss. And she even fucks that all up too by not being able to carry through on being an adequate girlfriend when the boss dumps his original girlfriend and wants her to fill the original's shoes. In her stories about Temp office workers and going home for funerals are all written is a style, like Carver, that makes the ordinary and familiar compelling and worthy of the phrase, page turner.
You should get a copy and read it.
DK

Economic Stimulus Hot Air

2009-02-11T11:44:00.003-05:00

When I went to college a couple of decades go, I graduated with a degree in Painting. I also minored in
Economics and really, for a short time there flirted with the idea of becoming an economist. I love
economics, it was just the math that was really of no interest to me. But the the theory part always
interested me.So, that said, let me weigh in here on this Economic Stimulus stuff going on....

I understand why you need to give money to the banks because I understand why they need to
feel confident enough to extend credit. With out credit, business is going to come to a hault. We need to
allow the banks to lend out money so that businesses feel confident about making their payroll, etc etc etc.

But here is what I want to see happen right now. I want the country to build a new 2009 version of the Hoover Dam.
What I mean is I want the government to start building windmills. I want the country to retrofit factories and start building thousands of windmills. Then I want the government to buy up land and start placing these things out there and then start
wiring them all up and then creating energy and a grid to harness all of this power. I don't know the math. That is my problem here but what I think is that this will create jobs and power and a source of income while spending lavishly to stimulate the economy. And it will give us a lasting legacy that we will all look back on one day and say that this was something that was accomplished during our own depression era. Because one the economy does finally get itself back on its feet, there will not be any legacy other than the bill that will need to get paid for generations to come.

DK

Mean Spirited Observations

2009-02-09T21:25:00.003-05:00

Here is something weird that happened over the weekend in the
wake of all of this economic disaster going on all over the place.
I went out to Nassau County this weekend, my son was invited to a birthday party on Saturday night. The party was in Hempstead at this place called Dave and Buster's and
if I didn't know any better, I was in a casino in Vegas. I mean there was so much going on between the sports bar and the bowling and pool tables and game rooms. There was even a theater for bands to play. I mean the place was fucking huge. And the place was packed. I mean people filling up every table, chair , bar stool video game, bowling lane and toilet stall. Crazy. And people spending money like it was 2006.
The parking lot was full up too.
So I am wondering, with all of this chaos and uncertainty why are people out on Long Island throwing there money down the toilet still.
Then it occurred to me that this was "Culture" for these people.
I admit that I am totally a snob, but that is it. If these people weren't spending all their money and time in shopping malls and in places like this, Long Island would be fill with serial rapists and sex offenders and mass murderers. And drug addicts.
Which kind of is the way it is out there anyway. I mean anyplace were Billy Joel and Joey Budaffucco can grab all the attention can't have much else going on.
Here is my economic stimulus plan: Start building a wall to keep those fuckers over there. Because when they finally realize how hallow their lives are over there, I don't want them all driving into Manhattan.
DK

2009-02-09T05:58:00.001-05:00

click on image to enlarge....

ON OPPORTUNITY / LUCK / PLANNING

2009-02-09T04:15:00.004-05:00

I was talking to this woman at this opening the other night. She's an artist and teaches at a school upstate somewhere, but she was in town and we bumped into each other. We go back a long way and she was talking to me about the big SNAKE OIL signs that I recently showed and how they reminded her of the big sculpture that I made maybe 10 years ago. We were in a show together out on Roosevelt Island. The show was of outdoor sculpture and the sight was under this cement parking garage. Some people Incorporated things like the cement support columns, that held the parking lot up, into their pieces. This woman hung a car off the ceiling and covered it with foam.
I remember when I went out there to look over the sight, it was the first time in my life I had ever set foot on Roosevelt Island. I was smoking back then and I remember needing some cigarettes and looking around for the familiar deli. Back then there were lots of these red corrugated awnings with flashing colored lights in front of every deli or bodega or newstand. Particularly in Brooklyn and Queens. I couldn't figure out where to get my cigarettes without the familiar flashing lights, so I ended up building one of these awnings, and hanging that from the ceiling.
I remember after I finally got it up there on the ceiling, I was back on the ground looking at it and a Roosevelt Islander was walking by and stopped to look at it with me. He said, "I moved out here onto this Island just to get away from that shit...."

Anyway- This woman whom I was talking to told me that she often uses our works in this venue when giving her lectures to students. She likes to tell of how when she set out to make her piece, she had worked up an intense proposal with lots of samples of materials and made a presentation for the curator to look at. She said that she spent hours on this. And that she also remembered that I had basically done a drawing in my notebook and tore it out and sent it to the curator with a brief note. Basically saying "Here." And that we both were recipients of the same reward. This was her long-winded explanation of how things can work in the Art World.

I told her that I have this theory. It goes like this: Every one's first show in New York City comes about because somebody else cancelled. Being an artist has a lot to do with luck. Being in the right place at the right time and being smart enough to take advantage when something opens up. She laughed and sort of agreed with me, although I could tell this all made her pretty uncomfortable. She was after all a planner. Maybe that is why she has a real job now and I am still floating around. I used to laugh at people like her for getting all tied down with jobs while I kept myself nimble and free, waiting to pounce when the opportunity came up. The only problem with my theory is that just because I have a theory, doesn't mean that I also have a strategy. And maybe I have kind of based a little to much of my plan on luck, since looking back I have to say that I am probably one of the luckiest people that I know... even though I would also have to say that at least half of my luck usually turns out to be bad.
DK

In Your Facebook

2009-02-03T21:10:00.003-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about the idea of having a Blog and comparing it to having a Facebook page. Both have their ups and downs for sure. I mean I have exposed myself pretty much all the way on my blog. Saying things in print that I would never admit to in public, and yet since virtually no one ever comments, I feel OK with this. Oh sure, every couple of days I check in on my Analytics to see if anyone is paying attention, and what new countries I've gotten visits fro. People are looking in it seems, but in general, other than the occasional comment of admiration, I haven't really been too surprised by anything that's happened over here.

Now Facebook is another story. I can't even remember why I signed up for Facebook but I have been keeping a page there for pretty much as long as I've been blogging. And people keep on turning up out of the woodwork and it is starting to freak me out.
I've been invited to join a group from my elementry school and even got a shout out from a kid who used to beat people up in the boy's room at school. He's a member of the group!
I've heard from all sorts of people whom I have not literally thought of once since even before the very last time I ever saw them. From all sorts of segments in my life.

I've met some new people. I got asked to be a Facebookfriend recently by two different art dealers that I have never met.After agreeing to their offers of friendship, I've been offered shows by both of them. It turns out I am apparently going to do art shows with both of them in the next month or so. Between all these new connections and old I have been kind of digging the hole Facebookthing.

Over the past couple of days my Facebookuneasiness has started to kick in. It first started when I started getting these "25 things" lists from people, list 25 things that I din't know about their personal lives. But that was nothing... I honestly don't like knowing too much about people. But the 25 List is nothing compared to what happened yesterday. I heard from -on Facebook- an old roommate from 1989. I haven't spoken to this guy probably since then. Completely out of touch. And the reason he is reaching out to contact me...to tell me that this other dude that we used to all hang out with from back then---is a woman. He is a she!
I found out yesterday that this guy who I have not talked to in 15 years, or thought about in at least 10 years, if not more; who used to be named Martin, now has tits and long red hair and a website and goes by the name Michelle. Michelle is a woman and an escort. And when I look on his website, I can actually see pictures of his paintings from the 1980's in a section on his/her artwork. S/he says that She "used to be an artist...and now I am the artwork..."
There is a picture of her running on the beach---topless! And it turns out, in her "about me" section, she was trying on her mother's dresses the whole time that I knew him back then.
I NEVER would have known any of this if my other friend had not "found me" on Facebook and clued me in. And now I know! Boy to I love the Information Super Highway. ( there's a term that I haven't heard in a while...)
All I can say is Thank goodness for Facebook. Who needs a fucking blog. I am going to stop wasting my time time trying to be entertaining.
DK

More, recent work...

2009-01-31T20:58:00.000-05:00

HOME DEPOT and the crystal ball...

2009-01-28T23:45:00.002-05:00

Last night I went to Home Depot at about 7 o'clock. I always like going at night, as there is usually a pretty good buzz there. People buying stuff at a steady pace but not crazy like during the work day or worse, weekends.
Anyway, last night I pulled into the parking lot, over in LIC, and the lights were off in the lot. I went inside and the place was dead. A ghost town. Man this economy is totally fucked. Home Depot is dead at night in Queens.
I am totally worried about this economy. The art market is dead and I have this big show coming up in March. It is one of these solo shows as part of an art fair. In the past 4-5 years, this would potentially mean serious cash to the artist involved. You have to pay top dollar to be involved. We are talking 10's of thousands for the weekend. My dealer is covering the costs. But yesterday I made a delivery to my framer and got
a whopping estimate for the drawings. After going to the Home Depot last night I canceled the order. I ordered a bunch of cheap-o frames on -line and the work is going to look just fine.
The art fair wants thousands more to construct walls for our booth so we can have a place to hang my work. Well, I've been building these temporary sculptures to hold my work instead. Sure the economy is circling the drain, but the way that I am saving money, I should get at least a few more trips around the bowl before I go down into the sewer.
How is that for optimism?
DK

Brother. Can you spare a dime.

2009-01-27T09:05:00.002-05:00

It is funny and almost perfect that at the exact moment that my career seems to be taking off like a rocket ship,
the country is stuck in a free fall recession the likes of which we haven't seen since the depression. I am not complaining or anything, but shit, is this is what getting a break is supposed to look like? I mean, I am getting these pretty great opportunities
but it all seems to be happening at the moment that everyone collectively has decided to tighten their belts and
their grips on the old wallet.
So I am hanging my shingle out there trying to get some work as a contractor again. No time to complain. Lucky for me I didn't sell off my tools when I attempted to quit my day job.
If it weren't for all of the irony here, I would be totally depressed by now.
DK

TWO SHOWS

2009-01-27T07:33:00.003-05:00

click on the images to enlarge.

I am currently putting together 2 shows that both open in the first week of March.
One in LA with Tom Jancar Gallery and the other in NYC with Aeroplastics Contemporary at VOLTA NY....
SO here are a couple of preview images as I run off to my studio...
DK

WHAT IS A PANT LOAD AMONGST FRIENDS?

2009-01-24T13:28:00.003-05:00

I got an email from a friend of mine. She has like 4 kids and was telling me about how things were going with her.
She lives in England and I see her every few years and every time we do get together she has another child with her. There was this moment in time when her first son was born and my son was born, and it was at almost the same moment in time, that we both had this tremendous connection with one another all around our mutual NEW experiences. Well she's gone on to have a giant family, at least by my standards, and we still have tons to talk about because we go back so many years, but it really has created something of a divide between us. She has been so busy. And I can't really get away with complaining about how much work is, having a kid, to her, now can I? Well that just takes away half of what I usually have to talk about.

ANyway, I was reminded of the last time that I saw her. I went over to England because I had a show over there. After I finished with the exhibition I took a train up North to where she lived, in Wolverhampton. It was fun and crazy to see her, there were at the time 3 kids running around, all under 6. And we had a wonderful time eating dinner and having drinks and the kiddies finally went to bed and we all stayed up late and drank more and looked at her husband's excellent collection of art films and videos... The next morning she had to run off and get 2 of the kids off to two different schools and I sat there with my hangover and encouraged her and tried to stay out of the way. So suddenly she said to me, "Would you watch Robyn, while I get the other boys off to school?" Of course I said yes, but the truth was I had not been near an infant in diapers in years. I wasn't sure what you were supposed to do anymore. SO the 3 of them left the 2 of us at the house and the little baby sat there in his little diaper and with in seconds of the door slamming, he proceeded to unload a mammoth load into his diaper that literally made him, sitting there on his ass, two inches taller.
Well, of course I pretended not to notice even though my eyes were getting teary from the stench. And an hour or so later, when my friend got home I pretended that this all must have just happened seconds ago.
I don't think that all of this makes me a terrible friend, maybe I should have rolled up my sleeves and helped her out. But the truth is that this was no real inditement on what kind of friend I am or am not. I probably pulled the same shit with my own son and my wife way back when when he was still in diapers. No. I am a really good friend. I am just maybe a shitty father.
DK

GO Get'em Tiger

2009-01-19T22:57:00.002-05:00

This is going to be great!

COMING SATURDAY

2009-01-19T22:55:00.000-05:00

Spend a Day with Yaddo

If you plan to be around Brooklyn and lower Manhattan on January 24th, clear your schedule because we've got two events on that day that you won't want to miss!
Start with a meet-and-greet with some of the 30 visual artists who have signed on for the Yaddo Artists Open Studios Crawl. Visit the workspaces to view new work, some of it still in progress, and to find out what inspires individual artists. It is free, and you plan your own journey using an interactive guide and map available on our web site (click for details).
In the evening, join us at Galapagos Art Space as celebrated performance artist David Cale spins a tale and The Wingdale Community Singers (including Rick Moody and Randy Polumbo) present a rousing set of folk tunes that might have you singing along before night's end (click for details). Tickets for the Galapagos show must be purchased ahead of time through SmartTix (click to buy tickets).

EVERY FORM OF SUPPORT FOR YADDO
ENHANCES THE ARTS AND OUR CULTURE
To make an online donation now, please click here.

yaddo.org/6B74411A.jpg

Do you know someone who might enjoy these programs? Forward this email!

Also-
You can see my show at Pierogi

SNAKE OIL

177 N9th Street Brooklyn, NY 11211
Gallery is open from 11-6pm.
thanks and I hope to see you then. David
=

HOPE AND CRISIS part II

2009-01-19T10:55:00.002-05:00

SO I had an unusually good and bad weekend all wrapped up into one. After my hissyfit about the NYTimes ignoring the NY Art scene by not reviewing any shows because of the inauguration, I went to my studio....Then I got my car towed on Friday which absolutely sucked and I would
argue was completely unfair. I knew I was close to that fucking handicap curb cut when I parked there. I looked and make a quick study of the situation and determined that it was not crossing any legal boundaries. But some fuck disagreed, and I found myself down at the tow pound. I was not allowed to get my car because of an outstanding ticket which I had been refusing to pay because I got that one for a SIMILAR infraction of inches (this time near a hydrant). SO I wound up in down town Brooklyn, arguing my case to a "judge" in a cubicle who told me I was guilty as charged, and the tiny check that I had just deposited that morning, for my work for the NYTimes, totally evaporated. I stopped by my gallery where my show is and was we all commiserated about the show not getting enough due attention, and how the economy had completely wrecked the chances for any sales at the moment. I went home and read in my friends' blog from Buffalo, NY a shout out to me saying that I was now obviously doing so well that I was going to have to change my act and stop complaining about everything....

So Saturday I went out to work early and got a real lot of excellent work done in my studio and even though it is never going to go anywhere in terms of helping to bail out my money situation, I was very pleased with myself. So I went out to Chelsea to look at some shows on my way home and stopped into a couple of galleries where I received tons of praise for my good show and also lots of commissary for the lack of sales across the art world. Then this one gallery owner woman said something totally funny...Her gallery is about as close to the Hudson River as you can be without falling in,and she said that the other day when the plan went down over there she ran over to look and could not believe her eyes. There were people being ferried over to the piers near where she was standing close enough to see that "people were walking around and didn't even have wet hair". She said they looked cold but everyone was totally healthy. No blood to body bags! This was big. So then this woman goes on to make this inspirational metaphorical speech about how this was a sign that things were going to turn out OK. ANd that Tuesday, when we get a new president, everything is going to start to turn around. Things are bad, but we will pull through. Well, I took that right spirit right to the bank and took out one of my last $100 and filled my wallet with a sense of hope.
Everything is going to be OK. I look forward to tomorrow and I am happy to be alive today. Tomorrow morning, I am heading straight down to the Parking Violations Burro and appealing my tickets!. That's right, the people will not be kept down.
So somehow I was inspired this weekend. In my book, it was n't such a bad weekend afterall.
DK

HOPE AND CRISIS

2009-01-16T10:31:00.002-05:00

I am a little tired of all of this inauguration stuff. Enough with Barak Obama. My attitude really took hold today when I opened up my New York Times, this morning. On Fridays in the paper of record, they will review the art shows that are going on around town. They usually dedicate about half a page. This is the first thing I look to every Friday Morning,
and at this particular moment in time, I have a show up that I am particularly proud of and wanted to see if anyone at the paper has noticed. Well, this week they decided to do away with the reviews. NO REVIEWS! ...Instead there is a whole section devoted to Washington DC and what to do while you are down there for the inauguration! Come on. Enough with this.
I like Obama and wish him well and lots of luck with his new job..but if I were him, I would have a pretty simple swearing in and just get right down to work. That is what I am trying to do.

Here is a nice interview...

2009-01-14T13:36:00.003-05:00

Origionally from Ashalt Eden...
http://asphalteden.blogspot.com/2009/01/7-minutes-in-heaven-with-david-kramer.html

7 Minutes in Heaven with David Kramer
David Kramer is the type of artist whose work makes you laugh at self-absorbed characters who ironically lack self-awareness ... then wonder if maybe you're laughing at yourself. Poking fun of hipsters, the art world, American consumerism, and even himself, the New York artist creates cheeky drawings and light-up signs that might just lead to self-actualization.

Kramer's latest exhibit, Snake Oil, opened at Williamsburg's Pierogi 2000 (177 North 9th St., Brooklyn) to a packed crowd on January 2. This is one exhibit you will not want to miss (it closes February 1).

[image of David Kramer's Snake Oil from Pierogi 2000]

We caught up with David Kramer, who answered a few questions for us.

Asphalt Eden: Who would you want to be stranded on a deserted island with?
David Kramer: My therapist. She's an excellent listener.

Asphalt Eden: If you had to have a portrait of yourself made, what artist would commission?
David Kramer: Do you mean like a mug shot? I can't imagine ever having to have my portrait made.

Asphalt Eden: What is your favorite time of day?
David Kramer: 5am.

Asphalt Eden: Where in New York is the closest place to your own personal Garden of Eden?
David Kramer: Coney Island.

Asphalt Eden: What's on repeat on your iPod?
David Kramer: Hypothetically, it would be Destroyer. This Night. I am still an album guy. I don't have an iPod.

Asphalt Eden: If you could ask God one question, what would it be?
David Kramer: The chicken or the egg?

Asphalt Eden: What message do you want people to take away from your art?
David Kramer: I think that in the end my work is funny and optimistic.
POSTED BY STEPHANIE NIKOLOPOULOS AT 1:00 PM

NYTIMES.COM

2009-01-13T22:39:00.001-05:00

Hey- I have a piece in the NYTimes.com today!
http://proof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/peeling-the-label/

check-it-out.
Thanks. DK

7 days left.

2009-01-13T22:03:00.002-05:00

Today marks one week until Barak Obama gets sworn in as the next President of the United States. Yesterday GW Bush made his last press conference as acting Commander and Chief.
I don't know about you but I am stuck here in a holding pattern just waiting for this week to pass. I have a show up in a gallery, no one is buying much of anything.I talk to people in all kinds of businesses, they are stuck too. I know the economy sucks. We all are feeling the pain and hurting. And I certainly don't think Obama is going to come in and make manna from heaven over here. We have some pretty big problems to deal with. But PLEASE! Let's get this boob out of office. Yesterday during Bush's press conference, he admitted he'd made some mistakes. You know, he said he probably shouldn't have said "Mission Accomplished!" so soon. He should have waited until he was done writing checks to all of his buddies before that. During his run in office the Oil people got rich. The military industrial complex made a fortune. The auto industry got a check. The banks. Every last cent and crumb was vacuumed out of the cabinets. There is just one more week to pardon all of his friends on his way out the door and then I think we should put out the banner. The only thing that he didn't do that he wanted was to hand the White House keys over to a Republican. But he never liked John McCain anyway. SO things didn't turn out that bad.
I hope this is my last rant about Bush. But he still has a week to fuck something else up.
DK

ARTINFO.com review

2009-01-09T19:35:00.002-05:00

Here is a little self-promotion...I got a nice review in Artinfo.com

BROOKLYN—David Kramer is Brooklyn’s answer to Richard Prince. Both artists rely on text and appropriated images, but while Prince borrows from joke books, and his work might be criticized for its cold indifference, Kramer’s musings are for the most part autobiographical and sincere. His kinder, gentler approach comes out of his idealized expectations of life, and his frequent disappointment.

For “Snake Oil,” his current exhibition at Pierogi in Brooklyn, Kramer exhibits a series of framed works on paper and a large sculptural diptych, all of which were created during a recent residence at Yaddo. Included are text-only paintings featuring rainbow hues and blobs of color blocking out passages. In Untitled (Retrospective), Kramer cites a conversation he had with another artist about the 2007 Richard Serra retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, without mentioning it by name. The other artist comes to the conclusion that with all of the power and influence a museum like MoMA has, it could do something more practical to help people than mount such grandiose exhibitions. Other works juxtapose personal anecdotes with imagery from magazine advertisements, seemingly anonymous and banal illustrations that could have been taken from 1970s greeting cards.

Carefully crafted to resemble a found object, his mixed-media sculpture Untitled (Snake Oil and Free Kool Aide) looks like two old-fashioned roadside signs you might see at the entrance to a gas station parking lot or outside a convenience store in small-town America. Each has bold letters and an arrow with blinking lights on the front side and hand-painted text on the reverse. One, peddling snake oil, features a stinging diatribe about a shady art dealer, while the other, promoting "free Kool Aide," boasts a rant about not wanting to pay for cable television.

Last year Kramer’s art was featured in an episode of Donald Trump’s reality show The Apprentice on NBC, although from what the artist says, the experience was not altogether positive. Maybe that’s lucky for him, though, as he’ll no doubt find a way to weave the ordeal into his self-deprecating, painfully truthful work.

“Snake Oil” is on view through February 1

Day 8- Time to start blaming people...

2009-01-08T06:27:00.003-05:00

All bets are off on my New Year's Resolutions at this point. I have done
everything with in my power to fulfill my promise. I said on New Year's that this year I wanted to make a Million Dollars and I have done just about everything possible to try to make that happen so far, and so far I have not made a dime.
It is time to start blaming people for why my life is not turning out the way that I planned....
Now comes step 8 of the plan...find somebody to blame.
I am blaming George W. Bush for why my financial situation has gone completely down the toilet. It is all his fault. I have seen checks written to all of his friends
for millions, if not billions of dollars since he took office. He set up the military contractors, he helped out the banks and paid off the insurance companies. He sent some money off to the car makers. Now I want to know where my million dollar check is. On your way out the fucking door, can't you just write one for check. You have already completely destroyed the economy worse than your old man did, and made a mockery the good name of this country and your own family's legacy (let's hope) so why not try in a final move to do a little trickle up economics and send me a check for a million and I will use that money to generate a whole new economy by spending it all over town lavishing the stores that I patronize with my good business.Hey I know that blaming Bush is old news and inappropriate at this point...but there are only a couple of weeks left. I just wanted to get my last licks in on Bush, so-to-speak... DK

POLAR AXIS

2009-01-07T07:20:00.003-05:00

I had this job once many years ago working as a landscaper. I was living in Washington
DC at the time, I had just gotten out of school. My friend would pick me up in the morning in his jeep and he would bring a bong in his over sized glove compartment and we would take bong hits and drive to the house of the guy who owned the company, listening
to Robert Plant. We'd pick up a van filled with equipment and get a list of addresses of homes which needed our landscaping attention and then drive to Seven-Eleven and get Big Gulps and start our day. In the van we would always listen to Howard Stern as he was on the air back then in DC. Neither of us really liked Howard Stern over all, but we both agreed that everyday he said something that would make us laugh out loud. He always would manage to get a big rise. SO we agreed that as soon as we laughed out loud we would turn off our radio and get out of the van and get right to work on that note. SOmetimes we sat in the van for quite a while waiting for that perfect moment outside of the clients' house.
I have started to have a similar approach to Facebook.On Facebook's home page the account holder is asked "WHAT ARE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW?" One time I wrote down that I was on Facebook right now. But for most people it provides an up to the moment account what my friends are doing. I like to check in and find out. ANd sometimes I see something that let's me know that it is time to turn off the computer and start my day, or just get back to work.
Here are two such RIGHT NOW quotes that I got at just about the same moment...
Jamie writes that she 'Just had a wicked hot Bickram Class with Svenya at the original Bikram Yoga!"
And at almost the same time I got this from Jenny....Jenny is feeling the sadness of the world...
I turned off my computer and started on with my morning tea when I mentioned these completely polar opposite emotional sign posts for how my day might turn out.
I mentioned this to my wife and she just shrugged. "Sounds like you're going to have a room temperature kind of day, if you ask me..."
DK

New Year's Resolution:Day 6

2009-01-06T16:54:00.003-05:00

I was thinking about my Million Dollar Idea today as I went to the bank and took out some money from my ever diminishing reserves. I was thinking today that maybe, just maybe I should should start thinking about things in a slightly different way.

Maybe what I need is instead of a Million Dollar Idea what I need is a couple of 1/2 Million Dollar Ideas to work with. Then I wouldn't have to have so much pressure on the one idea. Not that I am already giving up on my last idea...but I am having a lot of trouble locating enough Vintage Concert T-Shirts to really go into production for my Pillow company. So instead of wasting all my time at the Goodwill,and checking out Ebay or waiting for someone to leave an old concert T-shirt at my house, I think the new approach of having more than one Million Dollar Idea might be pretty smart and might actually start to put some food on the table. I am pretty pleased with myself for coming up with this new approach.

I told my wife about my new angle here and she said, " Why don't you come up with a Million One Dollar Ideas, and then we could really start making some money.
I hate when she acts like she is all smarter than me. It kind of pisses me off.
DK