Paper, Rock, City

Even though the blog was down, life went on for your writer, sometimes even culminating in the rare productive exercise. Here are a few recent shorts for the City Paper: "Remastered" at Studio One Eight, the 48 Hour Film Project, and "Mine" by Jeff Spaulding at G Fine Art. The latter two shows have already come and gone. There's another piece (lost to the archives, it seems) about Miguel Covarrubias, whose prints and sketches are showing at the Cultural Institute of Mexico until July 7—scroll down on this page to read about it.

On the music tip, I wrote some stuff about Zodiac Mountain (Wooden Wand + Davenport Family) and Queering Sound 06.

I also appear from time to time in the WaPo Express blog under the guise of Sight Scene. It's mostly newsy stuff, but I'll point you to an item on recent noteworthy achievements by people in the vizh scene (including Jeffry Cuddlin, Gabriel Martinez, Ian Jehle, Jiha Moon, Molly Springfield, Jason Zimmerman, and others).

Oh, and I wrote a review of "Animalia" at Irvine Contemporary, an excerpt of which is in the paper edition (I think). Here's a teaser:

After a selection process that ran longer than a year, Irvine Contemporary's associate director, Heather Russell, has assembled "Animalia"—a show featuring artists who use animals as principal elements in their work. The show, which opened last Friday, brings to mind the parting lines of Puck in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Excusing the bad behavior of he and his cohorts, Puck begs pardon for "this weak and idle theme/no more yielding but a dream." The concept behind "Animalia" is at least as simple—animals in contemporary art—and it stumbles upon similar moments of comedy, mischief and dark portent.