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16 April 1997
And Now It's Neither
(sketch)
A gallery commissioned me to do an Internet piece, Foundations, Fountains, Filters and Some Serious Money. The curator liked the work in progress, and asked if I had anything to put up on the walls in conjunction with the online piece.

I suggested prints of work that could be downloaded from my Internet site. The curator didn't like that idea. It wasn't because my work was boring, but, being a thoroughly modern curator, she didn't like the idea of prints hanging on walls.

She asked me if I did video installations; she was disappointed when I told her I didn't use video or make installation pieces. When it became clear that she needed something more than the Internet work, I offered her a cheap sculpture: a urinal with a signed print inside, the text of which reads:

    Once this was a urinal,
    then it was art,
    then it was a urinal,
    and now it's neither.

17 April 1997
The Duck, The Fox and The Hedgehog
A British Broadcasting Corporation reporter asked James, the duckmaster at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, if ducks were messy in an elevator.

James responded with a knowledgeable reply: "Ducks are messy anywhere."

I envy his certainty; I wish I knew as much about something--anything--as James knows about ducks. I suppose it's the old fox and hedgehog situation.

18 April 1997
Eat Art
I found a Leo Tolstoy quote that I liked, momentarily, before I thought about it.

    "To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it."

I think Lewis Baltz had a better idea, even though it may be just because it's more appropriate to this century:

    "A photographer has about the same relationship to his public as does a philosopher. There are very few people who are interested and most of them are involved in the field themselves."

Even though it's been years since I've seen him, I recall Lewis likes salmon as much as I do.

19 April 1997
The Chemical Equivalent of Mexico
While traveling in Europe I was treated to hors d'oeuvres including a gelatinous substance purported to be guacamole. It wasn't real guacamole, of course, but some insidious chemical substitute. Fake guacamole is to real guacamole as a "digital orgasm" it to a real orgasm. (Unless, of course, the real orgasm was a digital orgasm.)

Why bother?

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20 April 1997
I Vont To Bite Your Neck
I've always liked vampires; they were the catalyst for my first inkling of heterosexuality.

21 April 1997
I Am Al Dente
In his obituary of Allen Ginsberg, David Remnick talked about "the great (and long over) debate between the raw and cooked in American poetry," and, by extension, art.

I never heard about this debate. Since it's long over, it may have been before my time. I wonder who won?

22 April 1997
Fighting Wagner
I saw an old man strolling in the park. He walked erratically, and occasionally stopped then thrashed his hands in front of him. It looked like he was fighting with an invisible opponent or conducting Wagner. I suppose that's more or less the same thing.

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©1997 David Glenn Rinehart