Project Studios would like to welcome Tucker Rule and the band Thursday to our studios in the Neumann Building in Hoboken. The nighttime life of the studio is Rock and Roll, so I am pleased to have such an outstanding group of artists take up residence.

I want to take this moment to just write about Rock and Roll. I can’t play guitar. I stink at it. I can’t even learn it properly. Dave Hickey writes in Air Guitar about how Rock and Roll is just getting together to, “just play this fuckin’ song, man,” or something like that. I am paraphrasing. The point is, Rock and Roll is where I want to be in all of my work. I want to be the kid in Andre Rublev who casts the bell. I just want to pull it off.

I have neighbors in my building who are not Rock and Roll. They told me Rock and Roll disturbs them when they are applying gold leaf to antiques. I can’t imagine something worse. To hell with antiques. Gold leaf is only good for R/C Cars. I will take you to task, antique dealers. I remember when I lived in Columbus and Rollins was a guest DJ on the local Alt-pop station for two hours. People called in asking for “nice music.” He said, “I am playing Rock and Roll.” I will never forget it. They couldn’t even handle Rock and Roll for two hours! Just get together and play the fuckin’ song.

In light of the current situation in Haiti, we are organizing an auction to benefit Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres/MSF) to support their current work in Haiti. The auction will be held on Wednesday February 10 at 7:30 PM, with previews Tuesday and Wednesday.

601 West 26th Street (@ 11th Ave.)
8th floor
New York, NY 10001

The money will go directly to Doctors Without Borders via their web site as a direct donation.

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/donate/haiti-share.cfm

We are currently looking for more artists and galleries to participate. If you think you can help in any way, please contact us at info@artforhaitiny.com

On a regular basis I find vandalized corporate material around NYC. I am not talking about graffiti, which has its own dynamic. I am only referring to straight up advertisement damage. I like what I see. It is pretty pure expression in a form that is very different from graffiti, which can sometimes be pretty boring because it is getting more and more absorbed into corporate identities and campaigns. Ad vandalism isolates the attack element of graffiti from the creative or drawing side. Some of these are hacked up with knives, others appear to be some kind of solvent smear. For me, because of what I am into, they recall image hacking from ancient Egypt. One of the best that I have seen was a poster promoting a condominium in Jersey City that was re-postered with an anti-condo image with text that described lower class displacement. I missed my opportunity to get a good shot of that one, unfortunately. These are all iPhone shots at this stage. I don’t have the conviction to seek them out with a real camera. This is strictly off the cuff. I think my second solvent attack image is a little blurry. 

I made a little New Year’s resolution for myself. Working so much in NYC exposes me to so many people asking for help, either homeless or worse, so I thought that I might agree to help instead of hurrying by. I came up with a simple rule, if somebody asked and I had change, I would give them my change. Because I need my cash for tolls or even for emergencies, like a few days ago when the Christopher Street Station refused my MetroCard in every single turnstile and I had to put cash into the machine to get a stupid paper card.

It is quite a challenge to uphold the rules of this program because I am conditioned to ignore everything around me like everybody else. Maybe that is what this is really about. Surely my stupid pocket change is not really helping anybody, but there are studies that show that being ignored has very negative psychological effects on people. Don’t make me cite the study here, I just remember that it was about people who worked in retail like somebody at Sam’s Club who offers you a sample of some Italian sausage from a little grill. It drives people nuts when you walk by instead of just saying, “No thanks.”

I am usually either trying to see a client or rushing home as fast as I can, so have to force myself to stop, but usually I can do it. I was at the Broadway-Lafayette Station last week and a guy came right up to me and asked for change. I waived him off almost automatically. I immediately realized that I just broke my rules because I had change in my pocket. I started to follow him down the platform, but he turned around first and came back my way. He came up to me again as if he already forgot he approached me and before he could ask, he had my quarter. There is another guy who works with this outfit called the United Homeless Organization or UHO as it it written on his money jug. I understand that this is a kind of organized panhandling outfit, but that doesn’t change my exercise. If I have change, I give it. If the argument is that handing money directly to the person asking is wrong because it will not help him, I propose that without the cash in my pocket last week, I would have been standing in the Christopher Street Station trying to figure out how to get home.

I have seen several blogs that trash the UHO because the person asking for the donation usually gets to keep whatever they can get, minus fifteen bucks that they have to turn over to their headquarters, wherever and whatever that is. So, if that is not really a problem for me, then I guess the other complaint is that the organization pays some CEO for travel and expenses. Perhaps that is a problem, but again, because I am a quarter down at the end of the day hardly means that I have made a huge negative impact on myself or somebody else. Perhaps the president of the outfit is more than a pimp, I can’t say. Yes, obviously, a donation to a legit organization would be money better spent, but don’t tell me that another non-profit won’t spend the money on something other then direct aid to people on the street. I a pretty sure that people sitting in cubicles at most non-profits have a larger paycheck than I do. Is Lincoln Center a non-profit? The budget for their renovation is a cool 1.2 billion dollars. I heard the lead architect on WNYC last week talking about how the street is where all the city’s energy is and that Alice Tully Hall will bring the center down to street level, whatever that means. Does it really have to do that? Does Lincoln Center use all of its money for support of the arts, or does it pay somebody to drive people around or make copies?  Most of the sites that I checked out for background on the UHO were pretty callous, and one was actually about hanging out in the Hamptons, but the author took time out to belittle homeless people just to change it up, I guess.

1.2 billion is an amazing amount of cash, but I guess it is about the cost of a single B-2 Spirit, so maybe it’s not that great. I think 1.2 billion would be a nice number for some seed money to start a street-level arts micro loan program and still have enough money for your CEO’s expenses at the end of the year. Bloomberg was speaking at an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of Lincoln Center today and he said that there were twenty-thousand ballerinas in NYC looking to fill the one-hundred ballerina positions at the center. Really, twenty-thousand, or is that just cute billionaire talk. If there are that many ballet dancers out there, how many painters are there that could use a micro-loan to get their practice up. It is unfortunate that we live in Sparta and not Greece. The stimulus bill has next to nothing for the arts, a mere fraction of the budget for the Lincoln Center facelift at 50 million dollars, and I’m sure most if it will go to Shakespeare theaters that do a great national service promoting English plays with American money. Perhaps there is a way to do a micro-loan program for artists and really take it down to the street level, after all, that is where all the energy is. If there was a sanctioned program, there would likely be a way to get art onto the streets for real. We could get those ballerinas out for a few open-air performances. Can you imagine a serious sculpture or suite of paintings right out in the street? They closed streets this summer so that people could walk and bike them, and in some instances there was spontaneous dancing, so why not fund the dancing and throw in some heavy duty visual art too. It sounds weird but it could work, and every artist I know has a shovel ready project. I have one that I could start tomorrow.

Speaking of that kind of thing, I recently saw a lost/stolen BMX bike up in Clifton, NJ on the side of Route 46. I turned around and grabbed it and tossed it in the truck. No seat, no brakes, it is a typical abused and abandoned bike. It was probably stolen, but it doesn’t look like it was garage kept, if you know what I mean. I guess I snaked it because I saw the Mongoose decal on the down tube, and that sealed it. I have wanted a Mongoose since I saw a Trend video with Dennis McCoy riding his Hooligan. The plan is to fix it up and ride it around the West Village and the Bowery as a sort of performance. I have no idea what direction it will take, but maybe it is a warm up for Bantam Mechanics; a sort of build project with a performance to get my feet wet before we start the big one. Besides, I really want to ride in NYC and a found bike could wind up staying in NYC when the performance is finished. No real loss, given that the parts I need will hardly amount to a substantial sum. Maybe I can find a reputable non-profit to accept the bike, or perhaps I can just give it to somebody who asks.

The sequel to Get Serious, The Boss was also created as an identification photo at the Sherman Studio Art Center. Ian saved this one as well. Speaking of Sherman studios, I came this close to tossing a roadkill skunk into one of the glass furnaces over there one night. This photo features a Delille Oxygen welding cap, in effect!

The Neumann Leathers Tenants Association (NLTA) has won their battle for the future of the Neumann studio building complex. I should say, the NLTA is happy with the results of the Hoboken Zoning Board’s unanimous decision to deny approval to the Trammel Crowe Company’s proposal to develop a colossal condominium project on the Neumann site.  I should say, portions of the NLTA that are most represented by the group of small businesses that occupy leased space in the Neumann Leathers Company buildings are satisfied that they will continue to be able to have inexpensive space in a prime location without any kind of oversight or inspections of their premises that would normally be expected in a leased commercial space in such a competitive and densely populated market. I should add, many of the artists that are primary lease holders or sublease holders are also pleased that they can continue to provide, and in the latter case, work in, squalid studio spaces without fire code compliant walls or doors. They can continue to incorrectly and even illegally dispose of volatile organic compounds. I must assume that the building’s owners must be disappointed to not be rid of their toxic and poorly maintained structures, their absolutely decrepit parking lot, and their thousands of gallons of underground fuel oil.

The most recent mass email message from the NLTA proposes a new development project. Should I say another development project? The model and drawings have not been revealed, but one can assume that it will be more focused on supporting the existing Neumann community. I should say, one can assume that it will be more focused on providing space for the companies that can afford renovated loft space in a prime property in Hoboken. Perhaps, one should assume, that music rehearsal space and perhaps even sculpture studios may be considered too noisy for such a development. I am quite certain that commercial space will be available to those who can afford it, but how loud can I be?

Originally, the artists were the face of the NLTA, but it was plain to see then, and it is certainly the case now, that the small business contingent is the dominant voice. I should say, business contingent, if I am to include some of the multi-million dollar operations that are housed in some of the buildings on the property, for they are certainly not small. 

I suppose that now is a time to begin thinking about the future of the buildings on the property. I am willing to participate in a remodel of the property, but I fear that my small company won’t be able to absorb the additional costs associated with such a massive project even if it is a co-op, which has not been specified at this time. Given that the mission of Project Studios is to provide the most inexpensive studio spaces possible, the company is not posting record profits that could capitalize a major renovation.

I am happy to keep the Project Studios spaces on the third floor of Neumann Building H, and I will keep those studios available as long as possible. I estimate that it could be as short as one year, or as long as five, barring any arson or other maneuver of last resort from a would-be developer. I am currently seeking additional studio space for myself and for the greater Project Studios LLC company space for music and visual arts in another building or buildings in the immediate area.

In no particular order, all of the reasons why I am a sculptor, starting with

Reason #1: The Sesame Street I-Beam Video

Here is the link to the video on the Sesame Street Site.

If I can find another version of the video, I will update this post.

This is the infamous I-Beam film from Sesame Street. I am pretty sure that this is not an I-Beam, however, that is what Sesame Street’s official site titles the clip. It looks to be more of a forged component of some kind that just has the letter’s shape. A hot rolled beam would be a minimum of 24 ft. at the mill, I would think, and the form is not correct for a beam or a rail. So, what is this thing? I guess it’s not really important. I remember that in our house we called this clip “Hot Letter I,” which makes sense, because what else could you call it? I only recently rediscovered this film while watching videos on the Sesame Street site with my daughter. I can see now that it had a big influence on me. I haven’t done any forging for several years due to the Hoboken Studio’s wood floor and lack of a natural gas hookup. I could do some small stuff in the ground floor shop, but nothing as big as the forged pieces from grad school.

The I-Beam film presents the material properties of steel: ductility, malleability, oxidation, and incandescence at temperature. Pretty cool stuff compared to a puppet who eats cookies. Judging from the comments on YouTube, most people remember being scared of the segment. I am not surprised, I guess. It is a pretty real and foreign thing for a kid to see.

I would prefer not to write another post related to sustainability, but somebody forced my hand. Project Porchlight, a small non-profit company with large corporate sponsorships delivered a solitary Compact Fluorescent Bulb to my front doorknob. For those of you out there who love these CF bulbs, I just want to make sure that we are all on the same page. Fluorescent tube lights use a blob of mercury that is vaporized by a high-voltage charge generated in a transforming ballast. The ballast in a CF bulb is significantly smaller than what you would find in a traditional fixture. Because of their small size, they are wired up a bit differently and make use of a capacitor to provide the punch to zap the mercury. Electrolytic capacitors are prone to a phenomenon known as the capacitor plague. The plague results in the premature failure of the capacitor allegedly due to poor quality control at the manufacturer. One great example of this issue was the iMac G5 REP during which thousands of Apple iMac G5 computers emitted smoke, intermittently lost power, or were suddenly unable to be turned on. CF bulbs use identical technology in their ballasts. Traditional incandescent bulbs do not require a transformer or ballast. In their defense, at least CFL units don’t use PCB’s as insulating material in their ballasts.

The second feature of CF bulbs is the aforementioned use of mercury to emit light. The scenario looks like this. The bulb is switched on, energizing the ballast. The ballast delivers high-voltage to the mercury causing it to vaporize and emit light. The mercury does not emit any visible light, only UV, so a coating is painted onto the inside of the glass to make the thing useful. The UV bombards the fluorescent coating, and visible light is emitted.

The Project Porchlight bulb carries the following warning printed on the ballast enclosure:

Contains mercury. Dispose according to local, state, or federal laws.

Incandescent bulbs do not carry this warning, of course. The bulb packaging does not suggest a method of disposal, rather a website, Earth 911 where I found the following text:

“This type of light bulb uses a fraction of the electricity used by incandescent light bulbs. CFLs are becoming a household name for many reasons, including the attention given to them by Congress. Due to the their inefficient use of energy, incandescent bulbs will be banned by Congress, starting in 2012, with a complete phase out by 2014; even existing halogen bulbs will not make Congress’ new mandate to make all bulbs 70 percent more efficient by 2020.”

An 8 pack of 60 watt incandescent bulbs is $2.00 at Lowes and a 60 watt CFL equivalent 4 pack is $7.00. Let’s assume that a 4 pack of 60 watt incandescent bulbs has a street value of $1.00. The move to CFL represents a 7x price increase for the consumer. They are designed to last for several years, in fact, the bulb that was left on my porch has a 7 year warranty (if I use it 4 hours per day) from Silk Ventures Group which I have never heard of. I am quite certain that this company will not exist in 7 years and neither will their lumen brand. Their site uses a stock photo from iStockphoto. Never a good sign when your toxic bulb manufacturer was only willing to expend the profits from one pack of CF bulbs for their site’s main graphic.

So, if my bulb lasts longer than the company that made it, barring a capacitor failure, I should be able to re-capture that 7 fold price increase if I can tolerate the unnatural color that the bulb produces, and of course, I have to avoid breaking it. Here lies my principal issue with the CFL. They break. Sure, incandescent bulbs break too, but they are cheap and contain no mercury.  Remember, mercury is highly toxic heavy metal. The stuff is supposed to strike fear into us when it is in our water, in our living spaces, or studios. My studio building, for example, allegedly contains both vaporous and elemental mercury according to the development company that is trying to buy the property to develop a condominium project. The mercury toxicity represents death and our foolishness in using the building for anything other than a new development following abatement. Why do I want this in my house? Why does Porchlight get to leave me a piece of toxic waste without my permission?

The CFL is marketed as seen above in this image that I captured with my iPhone. The bulb makes money saving claims. Is this simply recession marketing or is there something else to it? These bulbs have obviously been around long before the recession hit, and it is likely that they would have never existed if there wasn’t a massive bubble of artificial wealth such that people would consider throwing money away at a more expensive bulb. I would suggest that most of these bulbs get purchased because they are there on the shelf within reach. It took me some real effort to find the incandescent bulbs at Home Depot. Now that things are economically sour, we have an abundance of CFL products and less money to spend on them. Let me digress for a moment. Perhaps this should be the subject of another post, but I want to suggest a very profitable business principle. You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip is a common phrase, but what if you had 200 million of them and you just squeezed a little bit more than you did before. To make bank, you have to find something that was priced fairly and figure out a way to inflate that price either by replacing the product or altering the market.

I took my awesome CFL down into my basement to do some insulating in one of my two crawl spaces that I prefer to call antechambers. I put the CFL into my auto shop style light thing so I could take it with me because the room has no lights. I was in antechamber A on my back working on stuffing R-13 Kraft backed fiberglass into the floor joists of the room above when I hooked the cord of the auto-shop thing and pulled it down from the nail it was hanging on. The CFL shattered and I was in the dark. No seven years for that bulb. I tried to remember my cleanup instructions. Leave the room for how long?

Let me throw one additional related comment into this mix. What if all this green stuff we are being bombarded with is similar to the propaganda driven materials recycling drives during WWII. I know that some materials were in short supply, but the majority of the steel was never used for anything, and most certainly paper and other more useless stuff was just buried. The similarity is that we are trying to make an individual effort to help and we need somebody to tell us that we are doing a good job. We all want to believe that we can make a difference, but perhaps packaging production is the problem, not how much packaging gets recycled. When NYC dumps 600 subway cars into the ocean, it creates a beautiful reef, right? How much money did I save last year by using a CFL instead of a traditional bulb when the Federal Government was purchasing thousands of barrels of Sweet Light Crude for the strategic oil reserve driving the price artificially high?

Perhaps this idiotic coffee setup at the Wawa in Toms River, NJ could be scaled back a bit. If Wawa has a coffee pot configuration like this in all 570 of its retail locations, and if its competitors like Quick Check and others who offer self-serve coffee do the same, is that enough to make my electric bill higher at home by increasing regional demand? These embarrassments must go, but how about keeping the extra hot plates for when one breaks down. Knowing what I know about retail, Wawa will remove these soon to appear more green, but they will be thrown in a dumpster, not recycled and not reused. This kind of behavior will go on and on but I supposedly will no longer be able to purchase a halogen bulb after 2020.