stress fractures

I’ve been working my butt off on both whipping my website into shape(it’ll hopefully be done this weekend), and prepping for a massive outdoor video install that’ll be going up here at the Ranch in two weeks(I’ll post the exact date soon), but I did manage to go to Basalt yesterday morning and shot a series of handprints along various stress fractures that I encountered in the concrete foundations of the many bridges around the city. Here are my two favorite pics from the bunch. The stress fracture acts as a keying device for the placement of my arm. It’s almost like the outline of my arm is attempting to prevent the cracking of the block.

volunteers needed

According to the stats on my wordpress dashboard there are definitely at least a few people reading this blog. Hopefully some of you are proactive enough to respond to this plea for help. I’m currently in a bit of a spot as far as my video work goes. I generally make lots of short videos based upon improvised performances that I do with my friends when we walk around the city and/or countryside. Currently I am one of the media resident at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, Colorado. The other residents are all really nice, but none of them have the sort of artistic practice that takes them out of the studio, so getting them to leave the Ranch is sorta like pulling teeth. Does anybody wanna hang out for the afternoon and shoot some video? I’ll buy you lunch and/or a beer. I’ve been attempting to shoot all over Aspen, Snowmass, Basalt, and Carbondale.

Below I’ve put some footage of a yarn-walking performance that I’d like to try here in Aspen/Snowmass/Basalt/Carbondale. This particular footage was shot in Athens, OH.

my email
jsonnein@gmail.com

more chalk handprints

I did this yesterday in the rugby-field/dog-park in the middle of Aspen. Look closely and you may see a little bit of puppy poo and/or paw prints. There was definitely more that a little bit of frozen dog urine about (note the dirty yellow tint to the ice).

chalk dust handprints

I’m planning on going into Aspen tomorrow in order to try doing this particular piece in some more varied sites. I’m planning on hitting up the rugby fields, a construction site, several alleyways, and the cross-country ski lanes that run next to the bike path that goes along the edge of town.

2nd HEAT LAMP INSTALL DOCUMENTATION (FINALLY)

I literally shot a good 60 gigs worth of pics while documenting this thing. I’ve spent the last few nights beginning to wade through the sea of photos. Here are some highlights. I’ve ordered them in a relatively chronological manner. The first few are from the first hour of the piece, the nighttime shots are from somewhere around hour 11 or 12, and the final daytime shots are from hour 15.

It’s going to take a while to figure out what I’ve got here exactly. I’ve barely looked at all the photos, let alone attempted to start editing.

ROLLING IN THE SNOW

My friend Elliot(one of the woodworking residents here at Anderson) took so many pics of me during the first part of installing my 2nd outdoor heat lamp piece that I was able to make several humorous “somewhat” illustrative animations of the event. The snow was too deep to properly walk through so there’s a great deal of stumbling, falling, and rolling about. Within the videos I’m tying off one end of the cable that would eventually end up suspending a cluster of heat lamps over the snow path between the painting and woodshop buildings. I’m also futzing with an extension cord for a bit which yielded a couple pretty amazing mid-air pics of me and Justin(another woodworking resident) tossing the cord back and forth. The pics are a bit over-exposed, but they still do a pretty good job recording the zaniness.

enjoy

FINGERSPINS(AN EXPLANATION)

I’ve been doing a number of different types of spinning performances for a few years now. Tripod spins, pole spins, yarn spins, and finger spins. In general most of my spinning performances yield both a time lapse animation and a number of documentation pictures of the circular markings left by the aftermath of the spin. I’m not going to explain the logistics of each different type of spinning performance within this blog entry, but I will attempt to as logically as possible explain the finger spin. Below I have posted an example of a fingerspin animation as well as two examples of the type of aftermath documentation I take.

In the manner of a compass using my index finger and pinky stretched as far apart as possible to form the radius of the circle I drew this circle on the side of a building at the Ridges complex in Athens, Ohio. The time-lapse animation documents the several hundred revolutions of my finger-compass that  it took to mark the wall(the animation is 10 frames a second). The aftermath pictures document alternate pulled-back views of the same section of wall in order to better demonstrate the scale of the circle as well as it’s relationship to the larger architectural forms. The only things making the marks on the wall are the oils pre-existing on my fingers, the dirt on the wall, and the slight pressure that I’m applying as my finger brushes along the surface of the wall.