THIS LONG CENTURY

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 1357 AND 1369 MINUTES

— In the spring of 1987 I was finishing a chemistry degree at UC Davis. In what would have been my graduating term, I took a beginning drawing class for fun, taught by visiting artist Scott Bell. Our assignment was to draw the same thing at least once a day in our sketchbook. A Japanese monster toy that spit sparks when you spun its wheels. Having never really drawn before, a new door opened.

Scott Bell, wherever you are, thanks.

A reproduction of Dave Muller’s first ever sketchbook.
Click image to see inside.
—

Dave Muller is an artist/musician/curator/dj. In 1994 he founded THREE DAY WEEKEND, a nomadic exhibition project. Dave Muller was born in San Francisco and lives and works in Los Angeles.

www.blumandpoe.com
www.gladstonegallery.com
www.theapproach.co.uk

Alan Watt, Wu-Tang, Royal Robertson, Funkadelic, Cutting Through The Matrix dot com, Forever disc two, Cipher, Tyson, Easter Everywhere, Inoculation, Simply Saucer…

IMPOSSIBLE, Fall 2009
—

Erik Parker is a New York based artist. He was born 1968 in Stuttgart, Germany. Informed by a variety of sub cultural themes, including music, graffiti and illustration, Parker offers a profound visual experience beyond his intensely layered forms of text and imagery. His work has been widely published and has earned him several awards. He has exhibited in solo shows in Tokyo, Milan, Manchester, Cologne, New York and Los Angeles, as well as in group shows around the world.

www.honorfraser.com

— My self-portraits are most often done when a scheduled sitter has canceled our sitting at the last moment. If I have a strong urge to work and can find no one ready to sit at short notice, I sometimes set up a mirror and paint myself.

The portrait with the white ground was painted on unprepared paper and the other on paper prepared with a dark purple ground of acrylic paint. Though the style of both paintings is similar, the experience of doing each was very different. For the first, I used the white ground of the raw paper for the shirt and the facial highlights. For the second, I mixed opaque white paint with various colors for the hair and to build up the facial highlights.

The two approaches are very different. Using the isolated patches of unpainted paper surface to create the highlights of the first, for the other I painted over the purple ground with ever heavier layers of opaque white paint mixed with color to achieve the flesh tones and highlights.

Painting pictures of myself is for me a hollow experience, since what I enjoy most in my sittings is my sense of identification with my sitter, of getting immersed in the exploration of another personality. By comparison, the experience of identifying with my mirror image seems somewhat redundant, like an impersonation of an impersonation.

Don Bachardy
October 27, 2009

—

Donald Jess Bachardy is an American portrait artist. Born 1934 in Los Angeles, California. He currently resides in Santa Monica, California.

www.cheimread.com

STARLING

—

Photographer Alec Soth was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1969. His work is represented in several major collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. His first monograph, SLEEPING BY THE MISSISSIPPI was published in 2004. Since then Soth published NIAGARA (2006), FASHION MAGAZINE (2007), DOG DAYS, BOGOTA (2007) and THE LAST DAYS OF W (2008).

www.alecsoth.com
www.gagosian.com