It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted an update, so here’s the skinny: back in January I returned to Los Angeles from a 6-week holiday. I started working a new gig for the Haas Brothers, helping fabricate their new line of furniture for Versace Home. It was glorious. I was helping make shiny amazing things. I learned all about how the furniture and design industry works. I could ride my skateboard to work in less than five minutes… in Los Angeles?!? This only lasted for four days (the skateboarding part at least.. I got to keep working for the Haas Bros…).

On Thursday of my first week of work, I headed home for lunch. We rolled around the corner to discover that the whole block was police taped off, and our entire building was a crime scene. Sweet right? So apparently half of the warehouse was a pot growing operation. We even made the evening news. We hired a team a movers on Friday and put all of our things into storage. That’s actually our moving truck at the end of the news clip. ANYWAY.. I snapped some photos and posted them over at D I O S P E X. Prints? Get in touch.

Moving forward … 100 mph, the Midwest has been like “Hey DUDE come visit, heck.. stay a while!” So here’s the plan: first, my very first bronze piece is up for auction. It took an insane amount of work, is currently getting a bath in strange chemicals for a nice patina, and YOU can own it! Bid online, or better yet, come to the party on May 4th! Proceeds support the Roots & Culture Contemporary Arts Center, where Tim Brown and I have an exhibit opening on May 10th(!!!!):

Here’s the official statement we wrote for the show:

In February of this year, the converted factory building in downtown Los Angeles
where Rimas Simaitis and Tim Brown had their studios was raided by the
LAPD. A massive marijuana growing operation that occupied nearly half of the
three-story warehouse came under suspicion with the authorities due to the
large quantity of power it had been consuming. One neighbor claimed that the
power lines supplying the building would glow blue at night- that is, until the city
removed these power lines a few days after the police raid. Without power and
under the impending threat of the city seizing the property, the tenants scattered
and the building was abandoned.

The original premise for Dark Star had something to do with low-budget science
fiction films and the idea of making portable and elemental bodies of work. This
was compounded by the shock of being displaced from their studios, and the
transitionary “Hey, can I borrow your studio?” phase that followed. The result is
an exhibit that explores space, time, and contrasting approaches to objecthood
& materiality. Tim combines the degradation of the urban landscape and the
everyday working aesthetic to create banal objects pointed in other-earthly
directions. Rimas dilutes romanticized components of escapism in an effort to
bring them to an elemental and mystical realm. The approaches come together
somewhere in John Carpenter’s 1974 student film Dark Star, a low-budget
parody of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey where the ship’s crew is
bored with their mission and spends ample amounts of time remembering the
days they spent in California.

“You know, I guess I miss the waves and my board more than anything.” – ­
Talby, Dark Star

If you haven’t seen the film, you can stream it free & legal HERE.

NEXT, on May 13th, Eric May and I are collaborating to present the E-Dogz Zombie Apocalypse Refuge Center at Gallery 400 on campus at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Flaming cocktails? Entomophagy? Spam Nigiri? Read about it HERE. The event is in conjunction with the exhibit I THINK WE’RE READY TO GO TO THE NEXT SEQUENCE: THE LEGACY OF HALFLIFERS, a retrospective of the HALFLIFERS project by Torsten Zenas Burns and Anthony Discenza that examines not only their work, but also the work of artists that they have influenced and collaborated with.

Then over the summer, stay tuned for my TBA Indy Island Residency at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and also an edition project that’s so fresh that all I can say about it is that it’s… fresh.

SEE YOU SOON CHICAGO!!! B-)