Keeping occupied

Oregon is under a shelter-in-place order. I’m working from home and trying to keep busy.

While work keeps me occupied most of the day, I have a lot of “in between” time - so I’m trying to look at art on the internet.

I follow a German conceptual artist Simon Freund. I find his work very interesting, and I’ve exchanged a few friendly emails with him. In his most recent newsletter he spoke about a new net-art piece he completed,

In this piece Simon has wired up all of his finances via web services and summarizes his current net worth. it’s daring to expose yourself in this way. One simply doesn’t talk about money, much less show how little you have at any given moment.

In his newsletter he mentioned requiring some help from a programmer to get everything working again. He linked to his programmer friend’s website - Marcello Curto. His site is mostly a photo blog of his travels, friends, and his partner.

He and his partner run a tiny little creative agency called Roark. From their website:

We are a multi-disciplinary creative agency based in Munich. Our focus is on developing branding & communication strategies for artists and cultural institutions.

Can you imagine? Running a tiny shop where you and your love do interesting work for interesting artists and organizations and get paid to do it? Dreamy.

While traveling back in February I picked up a copy of Dwell magazine and took notice of some tiny advertisements in the back. One advertisement mentioned works on paper by LéAna Clifton - with no gallery name or address, just an email. Clifton creates abstract photographs - many of which appear to be from trains flying by in a blur.

I also ran artist Jeff Derose in a tiny ad in the back of last month’s Dwell. Derose mixes photography with heavily textured encaustic painting. My favorites are in his tornado series

I hope you’re staying well, staying home, and staying healthy