General updates: I’ve been making digital things, looks like I’ll begin releasing those in some format or another before the end of the year. To make a bit more space for such I’ll switch to an every-other-week schedule with The Pamplet, will take some trial and error to find a cadence as the things evolve. After finishing the last show and gradually getting a better grip on blender via small digital works, my next larger architectural digital work is simmering—the technical challenges still seem absurd, but that is typical. This all feels like an awkward in-between stage, probably a sign of growth.

In early October 2019, just over three years ago, I visited NYC. The impetus for the trip was to see the Charles Ray exhibition at the Hill Art Foundation. Ray is one of my very favorite artists, and it was a highly unusual show. He exhibited several sculptures (including a never-before-or-since-shown personal work) alongside Renaissance and Baroque bronzes he selected from the Foundation’s collection—all of it arranged in his own idiosyncratic, insightful curation. As an extra treat, many of Ray’s rare, limited-edition exhibition catalogs were laid out in the reading area, and I spent an afternoon browsing. That week also included my first trip to Dia Beacon, and Bard, which had an unusual sculpture double-header with shows by both Haim Steinbach and Helen Marten. Anyway, I could nerd out at length about the great art viewing. After I got back home, I had a lovely dream: I dreamed I saw a very sweet dog that was pregnant with 60 puppies (my dreams tend to have a sense of humor with a bit of absurdist flair). I wrote in my journal that I had so much in me, like, A LOT, that I didn’t know how to express. I had all this potential, but somehow, frustratingly, though I was sincerely doing everything I could think of, I couldn’t seem to fully access it.

It’s good to look back on that time, and it’s amazing how much has happened since. For a bit of contrast, last month I had a follow-up dream: I dreamed I set out a special food for a bunch of incredibly cute puppies—they were so happy about this and digging in—then a couple of them saw me and jumped up to greet me with the most wonderful, enthusiastic, unbridled joy. Their pure joy was such a gift in the dream, it makes me beam. Maybe this joy and energy were the potential in my ‘19 dream, little did I know back then, and three years later, all across my life it’s starting to bound around, wanting to play. So much has evolved for me in miraculous ways since that NYC trip, much to come, and I’m beyond grateful for every moment along the way that’s catalyzed.

Terrestrial photography was feeling a little dull, I’m into space pics now. (Brancusi is of course an exception, in everything he touched he channeled other worlds, continued study.) The heavenly bods are positively gravitational, it’s delicious to muse on such hunks. This class of image is close to what we see in digital art these days—infinite space, gradients, spheres. Yet digital images don’t often muster gravity and magnetism. In a way digital simulations have too much freedom, the constraints of physics generate power, learning from simplicity and scale.

Rosetta (67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko anagliph)

Titan from Cassini via Jacint Roger

Thor’s Helmet (NGC 2359) by Rolf Wahl Olsen

Saturn and Titan from Cassini via Val Klavens

Today I’m launching a Substack called The Pamplet. It’ll be a space for letters on art, mind, feels, tech takes, semi-ridiculous self-help, varieties of mystical experience, and whatever else strikes my enthusiasms.

Movable type debuted across Europe from ~1450 on, and in its wake a new form of cheap, mass-scale, short-form publication known loosely as pamphlets spread like wildfire. As we know, these innovations upset the information environment status quo, and it took a few centuries to jostle out a new balance of power. Our time has parallels, though perhaps we’re living it at 10-100x. We have type at the speed of light, with nigh-infinite recomposability—and the party’s just getting started.

Seems like a nice moment to get out on the dance floor. Browse and/or subscribe here. Hot topics for future pamplets:

Sasha was like, your prose is great, very beautiful and so forth, but could you also try being direct? Polemic? Disagreeable?

And I was like, that’s impossible. My subtleties have subtleties.

So, you know, I tried. Took about 10k words to figure out what really gets my disagreeability riled up. The short list is norms. And materialism. Once I started insulting Silicon Valley types it was hard to stop.

Sasha is pleased with my progress.

Side note, working with a killer coach is my happy place.

For reals, I’m surprised by this latest writing thing. I sidled into it with my signature blend of nonchalant obsessive necessity and no expectations. It’s a practice in art, to care as deeply as we do and be open, focusing on what is—and what is happens to routinely be more awesome than I could imagine. My trends usually begin in nocturnal dreams, and over the past few years my most consistent reaction while dreaming is surprise. First I was surprised by the good things coming to me, and I still am. Lately I’ve also been surprised by good things I somehow have the presence of mind to do. There’s new sauce on board; I get glimpses of marvelous new structures and begin to explore them; I keep meeting all sorts of new friends, then irrepressibly give them hugs. And who knows what else, I’ll be surprised.