So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about pink Hummers…Yes…They paint them pink now…Paris Hilton pink. This is the bottom line for me with these things. Is there a more pretentious, self-involved vehicle on the road right now (I think the Escalade takes a close 2nd). What you’re saying about yourself when you decide to buy and operate a Hummer is thus. “I have no regard for the environment and I don’t have to care that I get 7 miles to the gallon because I’m special”. Now add to that equation the fact that you’ve painted a “look at me I’m really cool and special” car bright pink…well…my friend you must be really important and cool and cool and important. Hummers really are an obscene waste of resources, not only because of the abysmal gas mileage but also the resources that it takes to manufacture these monstrosities. Bam Margera has one because he’s an idiot, everyone else should know better. Why do I see Hummers parked in front of my local Whole Foods market…that just seems to be a conflict of interests. Does anyone ever wonder about vanity plates? Some of them are very straight forward THE-NO1, IMA-JRK, etc. Others are really cryptic I saw one this morning that said DBT-LSS. What does that mean? Do you not have any doubts? If so, about what? Why put an inside joke on your license plate? I don’t have the answers to these questions…I just ask them.

Thank you avid viewers for continuing to search for new content on my blog I assure you a new post is in the works. I’ve just been swamped lately at work. Thank you for your support and something significant and amazing is coming soon. Until then enjoy these links and cool stuff.

The Photography of Lori Nix at www.lorinix.net I saw some of her work in an exhibition at the University of North Texas a few years ago and it is some really cool stuff. She really manages to set up some beautifully surreal “train village” type landscapes and I really dig the sense of dark humor each one conveys. There is something sinister here and I like it.

 The art/illustration of Kozy and Dan at www.kozyndan.com. This couple makes a great team of artists. The panoramics are what are really amazing here. Some of the actual drawings I can take or leave but the panoramics have always and continue to amaze me. Very talented and very creative if you’re a postal service fan you may also find some work that you recognize here.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Baby 81  One of, if not THE standout rock offering so far in 2007.  This album is amazing and everyone should own a copy.

The Dallas Cowboys www.dallascowboys.com

we’re 6-1 have mounted one of the greatest comebacks in football history, have done better against the pats than most so far and Tony Romo is some kind of wonderful magic jedi ninja…guy. This just may be our year.

This work is really amazing. Sze makes these strange objects out of familiar and not so familiar debris. They seem awkwardly familiar. They are just vague enough to be interesting and whimsical enough to be fun. For me they beg exploring if you follow the link to her site check out the exhibition called “Powers of Ten” it’s like some kind of surreal archaeological dig. Her sculptures remind me of my childhood and making “set-ups” with my action figures in the basement. Some of the most inspiring work I’ve come across recently, Sarah Sze makes me want to make my art better.

I haven’t been posting as much as I should lately.  I’ve been busy at work and developing my own site (justin-strickland.com) as well as some other personal projects.  That being said I will be trying to post new content on a more frequent basis.  I will leave you with this question (in hopes of maybe generating so comments as well).  What roll have social networking sites played in our lives and where are they going?  Will they become a replacement for human interaction (looking 5-10-20 years down the line) or will they continue to be a tool for maintaining casual relationships?  Is the web 2.0 any kind of a substitution for real life?

Is the meta-narrative something that is still valid in our society today? Part of what post-modern thought implies is that the recent trends have traded one meta, or all encompassing, narrative of society and culture for many local-narratives in which the focus is upon individual experience. Abstract Expressionism (Pollock, Gottlieb, Rothko, de Kooning) I think was the last death rattle (at least here in America) of the Idea of a meta narrative. They had embraced this idea of the meta-narrative in their work, which is still referred to as being “heroic”. Their themes are that of redemption, aggression, and the transcendence of the medium, coinciding with the end of a primarily industrial economy in the west. The “hero” has since become an obsolete idea. Not only in the way we look at art but also in our culture. The new primary focus being a highly individualized service based economy fueled by the rise of the web, and now the web 2.0. In this realm of the web 2.0 the meta-narrative is almost non existent, with the advent of the blogosphere, countless social networking sites, file sharing, etc. We no longer exist as one large community, or a single entity, and instead our focus is on that of individual experiences and opinions. Post-modernity rules the internet, and it deconstructs itself as we build upon the ideas and concepts of it. It offers every user a unique and tailored experience. The individual chooses what information to ingest, which information to present, and has full creative control of both. If you don’t want to look at some part of it, you don’t have to. If you choose not to divulge a piece or pieces of information you just don’t offer it. And in doing so individuals have the ability to create themselves as the person they want to be. The walls have all but come down and the histories of geographical areas and cultures become ever-increasingly less important. The web 2.0 has become the country that the last few generations have adopted as their homeland. The internet has become the new meta-narrative and it serves as a canvas on which the children of the digital age paint their own local-narratives onto. It still amazes me that the deeper I dig the more of an argument I can make for the internet as a microcosm of modern society. The scientists are working on cloning and creating life in labs, when the web is so much closer than anyone cares to realize.

Memory is something that has become the one thing I think about the most in the last 5 or 6 years. It is at the heart of the work that I create. And questions about it tend to enter my mind more frequently than those having to do with any other topic. That’s not to say that I don’t think about anything else, I just tend to think about memory a lot. More specifically, it is the minds “construction” of memories that interests me most of all. Memory is not a linear retelling of one particular event or events, but rather an amalgamation of an infinitesimal myriad of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and experiences referenced and cross-referenced between completely different parts of our brains. Details become fuzzy and “plot points” are brought to the forefront, like a revolving door memories fade in and out of our minds. If I have a memory in which I know there was a chair in the corner, can my mind call up that particular chair? Or do our minds edit and in place of that chair is there a chair that I may have known around the same time? Or is it replaced with my idea of a generic chair, or an ideal chair? These are the things that really get to me? Are our memories faulty cameras? Things that are fresh in your mind tend to have more vividness and eventually you lose memories as you gain new ones. I can remember almost every minute of every day of the last week in 2007. And, I can only imagine that at this time last year I could recall those past three days in 2006. But now that it is a year later where are all of those memories of last year September 26th-29th? We decide which memories are important to keep and which ones are to be discarded. What I ate for lunch on July 27th in 1998 is not as important as what I did on my 21st birthday, so, July 27th, 1998 gets pushed out while March 24 th,2001 takes up residence in my subconscious. How much of our memory these days is reliable? As our culture drives attention spans lower it’s not completely outlandish to think that our memories become shortened as a result. In our world of digital still and video cameras, life blogs, YouTube, Myspace, and countless other documentarian gadgets there is no need for us to train our memories. We’ve built artificial ones. As print becomes less and less popular and the internet grows, it is likely we will become more and more dependent on computer networks to be the custodians of our history.