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[May. 10th, 2009|11:15 pm] |
since i'm feelin' bloggy lately, i decided to bring back the holiday posts. |
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| dan walks around: entry one |
[May. 9th, 2009|04:47 am] |
in the tradition of charles baudelaire, rebecca solnit, my two favorite "walts" (whitman and benjamin) and - come to think of it - my dad, i've decided i'm going to go for walks and document them.
my work is moving in a landscape-y direction at the moment, so i figured this might be a good way of "sketching," both mentally and physically. yes, this marks my entry into the already crowded club of over-educated wannabee flaneurs. and fair enough - they seem like good company. this idea is also inspired by a growing reading list i've unofficially prepared for myself, including folks like anne dillard, lisa robertson and jane jacobs (in addition to solnit's book about walking). who knows when i'll get around to all of that reading. in the meantime, i'm just gonna use lj to document these experiences. i tend to have decent conversations around here, so i figure this is the best place for it. and don't worry - i'll try not to act all willfully profound about it. cool? if so, read on...
( Read more... ) |
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| ten good things |
[Mar. 25th, 2009|06:13 pm] |
hi, remember me?
looking over this journal, i notice that the past half-dozen entries have either been about self-promotion or wacky youtube clips. consider this my penance...
10. 
i never put one of those best of 2008 lists together for music. but if i did, lau nau's nukkuu would be at the top of it. "lau nau" is the rock-star-name of laura naukkarinen, who plays with a bunch of finnish psych folk acts like kiila and avarus. the psych-folk scene in finland has been reliably awesome for the past 4 or 5 years, but i have to say nukkuu is my favorite record to emerge from it.
it's not dynamically different than her earlier album (2005's kuutarha). and heard alongside bands like grouper or fursaxa or kemiallisat ystavat, it wouldn't sound particularly revolutionary. but, for me, it exemplifies everything that makes the current psych/folk/drone scene so exciting. nukkuu is a challenging record, but it's also listenable. it comes from a psychedelic tradition, but there's nothing painfully nostalgic about it. its mix of melody and noisy ambiance blends gracefully - it's neither precious nor pretentious.
nukkuu is finnish for "sleeps." a sticker on the shrink-wrap of my copy claims it was "conceived in tight attics & vacant dens on off hours when her young son nuutti was fast asleep." i like this. a sleeping infant is perfectly emblematic of this music - which is tranquil, gentle and occasionally foggy. the record carries a bit of the uncertainty that attends learning to speak. the mysterious side of childhood, instead of the cute stuff.
here's a nice youtube video. i'd probably dress like her if i was a girl:
( Read more... ) |
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| new painting! |
[Jan. 12th, 2009|05:47 pm] |
Wild Thing, (2009, mixed media: pencil, gouache, india ink and paper collage on board), 36 " by 36"
... not sure i'm wild about this JPEG. looks a bit yellow-y? anyway - as you can see - things are getting more chaotic and a bit less figurative. here's a detail, from more-or-less the center of the image:
as usual, bigger images are available on my flickr. as well as a folder of gallery shots from my show at rebekah templeton, on display till the end of february. less narcissistic blogging is on the way soon... if there even is such a thing? |
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| my show opens tomorrow |
[Jan. 7th, 2009|04:22 pm] |
Up All Night: Mixed Media Paintings by Dan Schank
January 8th - February 28th, 2009
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 8th 6 - 9 pm
Rebekah Templeton Contemporary Art
173 W. Girard Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19123
267-519-3884
... so tomorrow night is my big opening. i wish i had more time to write about this around these parts. the past 3 days have been super crazy style busy. it's a solo show, featuring 7 paintings. one of them is brand new. i finished it yesterday afternoon, and i haven't shot pics of it yet. the image above is a detail from an old one. anyway, expect some documentation later in the week.
if you're local, definitely drop by tomorrow night! and if not, the show is open through february... |
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| happy new years! |
[Dec. 31st, 2008|01:04 pm] |
these dudes need to find themselves some GIRLS.
seriously though, i could watch soulja boy-related youtube all day. search "crank dat," you won't regret it.
2008 went better than expected. it was certainly the most broke-a$$ year of my adult life, but otherwise i could have done worse. i got my work on a few gallery walls (and i'll ring in the new year with a solo show at rebekah templeton gallery in philly opening january 8th... expect an official post later), found some decent teaching work towards the end of the year, went on a few nice trips (milwaukee, chicago, various nature-ish things), and met some cool people (including a nice young lady). some resolutions:
* shake it up a bit in the studio. i've got a few ideas about this, and most of them revolve around scaling up, working more quickly, and being less fussy about technique and materials. i'd like to finish 8 large scale works in 2009, and i think i can do it.
* start paying off some debt! yikes!
* write more often - here as well as semi-professionally. i find that i'm happiest when i've got art and writing practices going simultaneously, and i've fallen off the wagon a bit with both. expect more posting. oh, and did i ever link to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) murdermystery's film site, where i reviewed harmony korine's mister lonely? might be fun to do more stuff like this, etc.
* read more. i only read 30-31 books this year, which i've chronicled on goodreads - complete with mini-reviews - if anyone is curious. i'd like to be more in the 50-60 zone, honestly. or read a book a week, which i always say i will do (and don't). i got a LOT of books for x-mas, which should get me started. oh and maybe i'll get back to marx's capital one of these days too... sigh...
otherwise, things are on a decent track for me. i hope your new year's celebration is fun. mine involves an attempt at a vegetarian soup from morocco; we'll see how that goes. i'll leave you with more crank dat youtube, so you can party like it's 2007:
this one is clearly my favorite. |
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| merry x-mas! go tell it on the mountain! testify! |
[Dec. 25th, 2008|12:09 pm] |
i was at church last night. i still get roped into going once a year. the experience of what it feels like to sit through a catholic mass in suburban PA has never been more accurately captured than it is in this video. i felt like the younger one on the right...
otherwise, the holidays rule! i'm gonna get drunk with my high school friends tonight! |
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| happy thanksgiving! |
[Nov. 27th, 2008|01:24 am] |
i figure this is as good a time as any to post the much delayed fall mixtape, part of my on-going mixtape for each season project which i promise from now to eternity. i guess technically i'm a few days late for the season, but thankgiving always feels more "fall" than "winter," right?
1. emmanuelle parrenin, "ce matin a fremontel"
2. nina simone, "cherish"
3. donovan, "sunny goodge street"
4. brenda holloway, "every little bit hurts"
5. gal costa, "tuareg"
6. mona baptiste, "calypso blues"
7. bridget st. john, "back to stay"
8. white rainbow, "mystic prism"
9. wganda kenya, "tift hayed"
10. orchestre super jheevs des paillotes, "ye nan lon an"
11. tall dwarfs, "all my hollowness to you"
12. the clean, "end of my dream"
13. rodriguez, "crucify your mind"
14. neil young, "star of bethlehem"
15. maher shalal hash baz, "september come i will"
16. lau nau, "vuoren laelle"
DOWNLOAD HERE
so... if this works ok, the trick (apparently?) is to dump the tracks into i-tunes and then list the mix by album. supposedly they'll play chronologically that way.
making the tracks flow in a specific order is 75% of the fun with these, so please let me know if you're having trouble playing this properly...
(some tracks will be mentioned in an upcoming ten good things post that i SWEAR will actually happen one of these days!!!) |
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| art showcase at the university of the arts |
[Nov. 6th, 2008|04:58 pm] |
hey, if anyone is in philly tomorrow, i'm having a closing reception for some work i've had in a little showcase at the university of the arts on broad street. here's the official invite:
ON DISPLAY: A collective show
Works by Dan Schank and his students from the 2008 Pre-College Summer Institute Collage class. Also featuring student work selected for the Continuing Studies permanent collection from digital photography classes in Continuing Education and Pre-College Programs.
November 7, 2008 5 pm - 7 pm
9th Floor Showcase, Terra Hall
it's not a full-blown gallery thing. just five paintings behind glass in a hallway, along with some student work from the Collage course i taught there in the summer. the work is on display in Terra hall, which is on broad street at the corner of walnut. it's a few blocks up from the rest of the campus. take the elevator to the ninth floor.
( me as burt reynolds on halloween... ) |
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| my age, the election, predictions, presumptions |
[Nov. 3rd, 2008|08:57 pm] |
my dad is convinced that the bradley effect will cost obama the election. i've tried to reason with him-- stressing the increasingly insurmountable lead he has in basically every poll. i think barring a last minute terrorist strike or news of a sordid affair with sister souljah, obama is sitting pretty at this point.
george packer has been writing some interesting things about the end of an era, documenting the palin gaffes, greenspan apologies and ineffective hate that's triggered the current GOP implosion. their old tricks don't seem to be working. my dad notices this, but remains fatalistic (he's a political moderate who supports obama). when we talk, i try to play the role of "realist" rather than "optimist," because what's happening seems to be "realistically" good...
( long-winded, rambly... ) |
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| happy halloween |
[Oct. 31st, 2008|07:35 pm] |
real posts are on the way soon, i promise...
in the meantime, here's a halloween youtube mixtape for y'allzzz...
let's start things off with the best homemade music video on the web, with the most halloweeny hasil adkins song i know of...
( the nonsense continues ) |
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| ten good things |
[Jul. 29th, 2008|10:33 pm] |
(it's been a while... hopefully the insane length of this will make up for my tardiness)
10. 
i was in NYC about two months back, which afforded me the opportunity to geek out old-skool-style with purldrop about music. apparently both of our tastes are moving ever closer to seventies soft rock, of all things. the deeper we both delve into the folksy side of psychedelia, the more a mild hybrid of the two begins to open up. this soft little niche offers a number of charming, pleasantly arranged, well-conceived albums that don't get the love they deserve.
nick garrie's the nightmare of j.b. stanislas is one of the best of the bunch. released-- in france only (???)-- in 1969 to little fanfare, it fits nicely next to "baroque pop" gems like bill fay's time of the last persecution, nick drake's five leaves left and the first four solo albums by my beloved scott walker. garrie's breezy vocal delivery calls to mind early donovan, but his arrangements owe more to the psychedelic momentum that followed the release of sgt. pepper. the orchestration is often wildly inventive, but never overbearing. perfect summer music-- and probably the album that's been in heaviest rotation around these parts lately.
( nine more... ) |
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| some quick notes |
[Jul. 9th, 2008|10:24 pm] |
1. you may have read about this already (i know alex and bess did, haha), but social theorist david harvey is currently posting video documentation of an entire course he teaches on marx's capital:
http://davidharvey.org/
i've been considering reading capital anyway lately. i try to read one big, intimidating book a year (more or less). maybe capital will be this year's moby dick? i might use harvey's project as the catalyst to actually do it. it's one of those books that seems insurmountable without a classroom to support it, and a cyber-classroom has apparently arrived.
if anyone else thinks this is a good idea, i'm considering setting up some kind of cyber-reading group? nothing too heavy-duty, maybe an email correspondence or a yahoo group or something (maybe even an lj community)? i read harvey's a brief history of neoliberalism about three months back and found it compelling. anyway, comment or email me at danschank at gmail dot com if you're into this. i probably won't start the actual reading for a week or two though.
2. i started teaching for the first time in about 7 years yesterday and i'm really enjoying it. i was in a thrift store today picking up stuff for a still life i'm making tomorrow, and i came across this beautiful promotional picture book about albert lamorisse's the red balloon. 99 cents. i love thrift stores.
3. political boy wonder ezra klein just posted an interesting chart from the center for arms control and non-proliferation comparing the american and iranian military infrastructures. as you might guess, it makes the current war-mongering sound ridiculous.
4. google blog search makes it really easy to download obscure records all day long. good thing i have steady work to distract me.
5. the gallery in milwaukee that's showing my paintings just posted an online tour of the show, and video interviews with me and the other artist (elizabeth ann lopez). the conversation in the interview comes right out of the artist's statement some of you have been helping me with (btw, you are all AWESOME for giving me advice). i love the idea of video interviews-- and i'm glad to do it-- but watching myself on quicktime makes me really self-conscious! anyway, to the 75% of you who've never heard my voice or seen me move around or wondered how many times a person can say "umm..." in one sentence, the link above is your chance. |
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| christopher hitchens is waterboarded |
[Jul. 2nd, 2008|03:19 pm] |
at the risk of spreading around the bad cheer, i'm cross-posting a video i found on atthesametime's journal of christopher hitchens being (voluntarily) waterboarded.
* the video is HERE.
* hitchens' article about the experience is HERE.
obviously, this is disturbing stuff, so consider yourself warned.
and to those of you unfamiliar with hitchens, i'd be hard-pressed to find someone with more peculiar political allegiances. the official story paints him as a "reformed" leftist turned neo-con, or a "liberal hawk," or simply a contrarian alcoholic. all these tags are at least partially true, but the full-picture is more complicated. hitchens was and remains an ardent supporter of the war in iraq, but is also sharply critical of the occupation of palestine. he speaks favorably of people like paul wolfowitz (deputy secretary of defense under rumsfeld), but also authored the trial of henry kissinger-- in which he argues that one of the key administrators of our last giant, publicly-debated foreign policy catastrophe (vietnam) should be tried internationally as a war criminal. recently, he's received a lot of press for being perhaps the most belligerent anti-theist in the public sphere-- having authored the not-so-subtly-titled god is not great: how religion poisons everything.
i'm including this long, weird bio because i think it absolves him of any clearly-define-able political opportunism going into this. sure, there's a sense of bravado to it-- and hitchens is almost certainly trying to generate publicity/controversy for himself (in fact, he's a total showboat in this department). but it's not a gesture that can be reduced to, say, a moveon.org prank or a ploy to get obama elected. in a way, the fact that he's alienated himself so deeply in the public sphere (the right AND left typically deplore him) makes him an interesting candidate for this horrible experiment.
but enough political yapping. for whatever reason, some potent evidence that waterboarding is DEEPLY fucked up has arrived on the internet. if you have the stomach to check it out, click the links above. |
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| done. |
[Jun. 16th, 2008|04:22 pm] |
Lights Out (2008, mixed media: pencil, gouache, india ink and paper collage on board), 18” by 24”
this came out a little wonkier than expected. not sure how i feel about it yet. i wanted to loosen things up a bit, so mission accomplished on that front, i guess? i think i need to scale up again. my ideas are starting to need more space to move around. detail to follow after the cut...
( Read more... ) |
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| "landscapism" at the armoury gallery in milwaukee |
[Jun. 11th, 2008|05:41 pm] |
hi folks. sorry things have been so quiet on this here journal. part of the reason is that i've got a show coming up. it's in milwaukee-- a city i've never actually visited. do any of you guys live in or near milwaukee? if so, you should come. i'm actually gonna be out there for the opening, as part of a week-long trip to (mostly) chicago. hell, if chicago peeps want to come along, we might round up a little posse? i'm not entirely sure how to hype this thing, since it's in a city where i know literally no one. but the gallery is brand new, they're showing some really nice work, they've been super professional and accommodating with me, and they're excited enough about what i'm doing to showcase 10 of my paintings. some more details:
Landscapism @ The Armoury Gallery
June 20th - July 18th
Opening Reception Friday, June 20th 7-11pm
All artists will be in attendance
http://www.thearmourygallery.com/
The Armoury Gallery is pleased to announce Landscapism, the second exhibition for the new gallery, with an opening reception to be held Friday, June 20th, from 7-11 pm. Philadelphia artist Dan Schank, and Chicago artist Elizabeth Ann Lopez will exhibit new and old works, while recent MIAD graduates Mark Schieber and Erik Baden will collaborate on an installation for the show.
if anyone isn't totally tired of looking at them, most of my paintings can be viewed on my flickr page. as i said, ten of these will be on display, and nine are visible on flickr... it's essentially all of my work since about 2005, save broken eggs for breakfast (which was too heavy to ship) and december in the dust (which i sold, appropriately, last december).
the tenth painting is still unfinished! however, i took some in-progress shots of it today for a lecture i'll be doing later in the summer (i'm teaching a course on collage at a local university). i figured i'd post them here as well, since i often fear that the cut-and-paste aspect of what i do doesn't translate well into JPEG format...
( Read more... ) |
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