Outdoor Seating

This is why I carry a camera everywhere I drive.  I have a collection of abandoned couches, loveseats, recliners from all over Los Angeles.  You never know when an opportunity for an image will present itself and add to my collection.  Last Saturday, we drove around Pasadena running errands and visiting my brother's new digs off Linda Vista Drive just above the Rose Bowl.  On our way, we hit the World Market store by Rosemead and Colorado and had to turn around at the end of the block when I saw this white couch against this painted green brick wall that is somewhat curved.  I believe this is the old Circuit City building -- now a Sprouts Market, and what used to be red paint is now green, the color of Sprouts.  On a beautiful Southern California day, it was in the mid 70s and the sky was as blue as they get around mid afternoon.  Was the couch placed here because it was a great place to enjoy the warmth of the winter sun?

Home Studio

I still contend that the formal living room in our Rancho house is the most useless area -- until I decided to move in all our music equipment into it last week.  To put this in context, when we lived in our tiny Pasadena house, the living room was the central place where we relaxed, watched TV, read, play music, etc.  When we moved to Rancho, Sam or I used to pound the drum in the downstairs bedroom closest to our neighbor to the south -- who has a little baby born last year.  With JJ's 100 Watt bass amp and my 100 Watt guitar amp, it's only a matter of time before the neighbors complain.  Moving the music equipment into the living room served to minimize the noise exposure to most neighbors as well as find some utility for this room.  The acoustics in the 20 foot ceiling also helps us hear each other better when we're playing, meaning we can also crank up the volume a couple ticks more.  The photo above is the living room as viewed from the balcony -- definitely, the best seat in the house.

Intersection of Route 66 and Azusa Avenue

I've been leaving Rancho Cucamonga at 6am all year and usually get to this intersection around 630am on my way to work.  I always have the camera handy just in case something interesting catches my eye.  Today, the almost-blue sky just before sunrise formed a nice complement to the orange glow of the streetlamps on the northbound one-way Azusa Avenue.  This area had changed over the years.  I vaguely remember buying a used acoustic guitar from a pawnshop, Wimpey's that used to be right where that empty parking lot is today.  Although this intersection had changed a lot, the City of Azusa seemed to have stayed the same (to me at least after having worked here for the last 11 years).

Cruising With Elsie

After having Elsie serviced a few weeks ago, it's time to enjoy the warm January afternoon sun in California.  I drive her about 15 miles a week just so she's happy and runs well.  She loves the streets above Day Creek Blvd overlooking the cities of Etiwanda and Fontana.  Today was 80 deg F, the winds having died down and was just absolutely perfect.

In Search Of Language

I've always been interested in communciation between any two unique beings with enough cognitive skills as well as how a common language is developed.  The pool of beings who speak this language grows as time goes on and at some point, the origin of that language is lost in antiquity.  I also have long pondered the question of how we, earth creatures can communicate with extra-terrestrials if contact is made at some point.  I believe that the method that will work will need to have both a solid mathematical basis as well as a simple visual interface.  After all, language really is just a construct of symbols and combinations of symbols that a group of users share.  Language also exists to allow man to talk to machine.  Computer languages at the lowest level consists of simple binary instructions to electronic switches.  At the next level, groups of predefined binary instructions form a single available directive to accomplish a complex series of tasks.  Define enough of these stringed-directives and you have a words and soon enough, a complex vocabulary.  At the highest level, you end up with what you have in modern computers, GUIs.  Since I don't have any formal art training, I continually struggle to communicate my ideas to others who are versed in the language they teach at art school.  I am more comfortable when speaking in the language of the natural sciences and mathematics.  So I had come up with several constructs that are relatively simple ways of representing visually a number system.  The real beauty for me is the existence of hidden mathematical structure within the seemingly visual random image.  And unless the viewer is cognizant of the decoder ring, they will not see its inherent elegance.  This had always fascinated me in the natural world from Newtonian mechanics describing binary stars to statistics methods explaining gas behavior.  As with my series of frameworks, the observer needs to find that mathematical pattern in order to see that there is hidden order underneath all that mess.  (Above is a representation of the 16 unique numbers using permutations of diagonal lines over spatial compartments of two sizes.  A common start-of-series and end-of-series patterns bookend any possible series consisting of any combination of the inner 16.)

Visual Mathematician

I've taken about half a dozen IQ tests as an adult and after every test, based on the sections I did OK in, I had been profiled as a "visual mathematician".  I'm not sure what that really means other than I have above average math skills as well as above average visual logic skills.  I hadn't really paid too much to that description of me until recently when I realized that a good percentage of the artwork I had produced lately have a very definite mathematical structure behind them.  It started a few years ago when I used to dial in to teleconferences for hours on end and I doodled on engineering graphing paper to keep my sanity.  Pretty soon, I had algorithms that generate specific non-decimal patterns and had consumed several pads of the pre-lined paper.  Years ago, I learned that math provides the elegance behind physics and the natural sciences but only lately have I come to realize that math can also be the basis of visual aesthetics.  Today, I make drawings executed on graphing paper.  What I like about my grid drawings is that fact that underneath all the apparent chaos of each drawing is a hidden mathematical structure.  They're not too terribly complex but it does take a bit of work to see the numerical basis of the visual.  (Above is a current work in progress titled "Number 0 Through 48 In A Spiral Progression")

Five Landscape Paintings (2007)

Not that kind of landscape painting.  Conceptual art is something I don't necessarily relate to nor something I find remotely interesting.  However, as my form of protest, I think it's a fairly convenient medium due to its simplicity and ease of execution.  As a way of poking fun at the art establishment, in particular art critics, I think conceptual art is both fitting and ironic.  Why on earth do these people have to speak in such flowery, incomprehensible language and pseudo technical terms that only they and their colleagues can understand -- no, actually, I doubt they even understand each other when they speak.  So this series I did back in 2007 is my way of saying that I'm just got so sick of artists and art critic using and abusing the word "landscape".  At some point, someone needs to tell these people to please just speak in normal English that average person can understand.  Kill the pretentious.  Using some stencil, black and white enamel spray paint and some cheap poster boards from Target, I think my commentary on the whole absurdity of the language of art speaks for itself.