A Trace of Those Who Used To Be

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"tonight we’re going to keep this city up
when they hear our bodies
slap together like applause."

Skin 2   -Riley Dog

Mozart man. It's the only music that makes me cry.

Phase II is a figment of your imagination

 Thing about break ups is i've had one with every person i ever dated

 The wine glass is always half full

It was a Dark Dark night
In a Dark Dark room
With a Dark Dark beer

I don't want to buy a cheap new one.  I want an old one that lasted this long.  It'll last a little longer.

 Lets get something nice for mom

Check out the full moon... Nope. That's a Street lamp.

No Thanks. I'm Good.
No Dave. You're the best.

Die

Fairwell My Friend

The Polaroid Series

In the fall of 2007 while rummaging through a discount bin at a drug store on Corydon my friend kain from victoria found some expired polaroid film.  It didn't sync with his camera so i bought it instead. i got 5 packages of 30 and two packages of 10 each priced at 1 dollar. i remember leaving three packs 10 packs behind and regretted it for ever. So for $7 +tax i got 170 pictures but no camera to match the 600 film.  i ended up opening one of the packages of film that winter before finding a camera and cut out old photos to glue onto the window of the undeveloped film. they were old pictures from victoria. i mailed them to a friend back there.

In April of 2008 i was in Saskatoon by myself on business and decided to wander around the town. i think it's one of Canada's forgotten cities, it's beautiful there. i walked into a tiny camera repair shop and there she was. like my wand choosing me. a small dusty polaroid camera waiting for me.
when i got home i rushed to my room and tried out it out. i was so excited by not knowing if the film was still good or if the little asian man from Toon town was ripping me off. IT WORKED! the very first photo i took was the first photo in this series project.  i took my first photo and put it into the second photo. when it came to the third i almost put the first one in again but thought no, i'll put the second one in instead. i was so excited i immediately shot my whole first cartridge. very little thought was put into the starting of this project, it just kind of happened.
Over the following 3 years i lugged my camera around my neck. this project and i have been though so much together. there is a story, a memory, for all 204 pictures. taking photos of friends and the support they showed for the project helped me keep going through the tough times. over the three years i had two of my cameras stolen and broken, one of them one of them thrown against the walll. i went through a couple months without shooting when i felt i had no friends. there was a time when i said "this project is the only good thing going for me in my life." someone said "that's so sad".  The day i got my typewriter i started typing captions/puns/rhymes/inside jokes on the white space underneath, mostly puns to do with the person's name or what is going on in the picture.  there are countless reference pictures in the series that were shot because of other older pictures myself or other friends had taken. at the end of the summer of 2010 after realizing i would never reach my goal of 200 pictures due to the stealing and smashing of my camera i had one picture left and realized it was all over. Then as an unexpected gift (possibly the most meaningful, selfless, important gift i've ever received) i was granted 10 more photos to finish my project from someone special i barely knew.
The series is made up of 204 photos, over 200 hundred friends, spanning 8 cities, over the past 3 years of my life and now it's over.  it's over. it's over. it's over. it's hard to think that something so important to me is finished. my initial reaction was being on the brink of tears. it's all very overwhelming. but then i force myself to look back onto it all and smile. the reason i feel this way now is because it was so amazing while it lasted. like a said in a post not too long ago thinking about stuff like this.

"every so often amazing things come your way. you do that for a while then you do something else then you do something else and so on. that is life."  -Ian Johnson

Just Another Extra Ordinary Day

The Future

every so often amazing things come your way. you do that for a while then you do something else then you do something else and so on. that is life.

today i found that amazing thing once again. i know it's not my idea but i could do it differently and then it would be.

here it is.

WORD UP

i just remembered but i forgot not to think about it
that this song reminds me of another time
when the trees were tall and the ocean was in the air
on an island off the coast in the spring
where people dress in public and smile in private

oh why did i leave but never arrive
in the nest of dreams and love these wings
i fell and never quit falling
and where am i

on the lids of inward eyes
in the cell of the brain
an empty vessel in space
lonely
drifting
trapped in the outer orbit of a chronic habit
of never speaking and always listening to silence
never learning
always hurting
more than a pin prick

the pin drops
and all is still
and here i am
again
washed up on shore
and the tide
is receding
and the day is new
and the sand moves
up wind
drifting
settling
and here i am
again
back at the mouth of the bay
above sea level
learning to fly
like penguins do
underwater
emperors of the sea
all hail flightless birds

long live the kings of freedom
and the queens of laughter
and the jokers who cry
for soon their day will come
and to you fair lady
who never needs rescuing
you could never save me
for i am no knight
i am the day
before and after noon
the rise and set of sunlight
and mere reflection upon your moon
waxing and waning
for the second time in june
but never the new

i know this orbit
the great fall of the tide
the sudden darkness
of this deserted island
beyond the reach of penguins
and the merry men
of my kingdom



written in the dark by Ian Johnson

I Made It Therefore Its Art

"i made it therefore its art" is the conclusion i came up with in my first week of art school where in every class they ask you the famous question "what is art?"

my art history professor stated anything deemed to be art by the upper society of art, such as museums, is art.  my basic design professor said "there is no art without concept" to which i replied "what about doodles?" my open studio professor said "anything can be art nowadays"

so that's where i come in and say anything can be art. art is the everything word. 'art form' is all of the things that are boarding people's general idea of what art is. art is more of the way you look at something and as a result of this, the way something is presented. you wipe your ass, put it in a frame and hang it in a gallery and it could be art. in fact i'm going to google it to see if it's been done before.... this SHIT is close enough. don't get me wrong, i'm not bashing anyone or anything. in fact i'm praising the versatility of the word ART.

P.S. i said "art" 14 times. now 15.

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Here's a fully functional and unpractical bicycle i built between 2004 and 2006. it is nine feet long.

2006 the first painting i ever sold for 40 dollars which my mom would later say wouldn't cover the cost of the frame. the first time a used a palate knife to paint. entitled  Spence after my art teacher who said he couldn't help me with any abstract paintings or with palate knife work because he didn't know how. He would later tell me to use more red.

2006 The first bowl and lid i ever made on a potter's wheel. i used glazes with such names as lava red.

2006 First clay sculpture. entitled Head Over Claws. with a head on a shoe connected to the body of a snake connected to the claw of an eagle.

2006 my first painting i ever liked. entitled Starry Thompson.  it was the first thing i did after being introduced to Tom Thomson's work combined with my love for van gogh. i once priced it at $1000 and nobody bought it. i will never sell it.

2006 sifting through magazines and choosing cut outs based on colour i made this collage. entitled True Colours after watching a barber shop quintet sing true colours better than Cindi Lauper.

2006 greeting card mono print, on rice paper? first form of print making i ever did. 

2007 the result of being bored at a friend's house i made this mockery of traditional still life.

no comment

2007 i stole a big stack of cups. i threw them down a stairwell one by one. then this happened.

2007 after forgetting about a jug of water in the freezer i was trying to hastily cool i watched it melt. first under hot water, then in a frying pan. while in the pan i realized there was cool frozen bubbles inside and decided i must keep it and put it back in the freezer. the result: a stovetop that appears to freeze instead of heat.

a lobster shaped orange peel. try to believe me when i say it's about the little things in life.

after using an excessive amount of dish soap the sink over flowed and i threw these bubbles into a dirty pot. after an unknown amount of time the bubbles began to become moldy and create this interesting inverted contrast between moldy bubbles and pot.

just add sprinkles and water.