I have a chronic and long-standing hatred and contempt for my own work. It’s endemic to the profession, generally… like the common cold of design. Or really, any field where making things out of ideas is the stock and trade.

But so: my dear friend GAC, if you don’t know him, is a supremely excellent photographer based in PHL. He can really point a camera at stuff, and he can really whip a llama’s ass with a belt. After I fretted publicly about not having decent photos of my design crapola, he suggested that he might assuage my stated disparity, and we hatched a plan. We had a raucous 24-hour work-bender-photoshoot, some of the results of which you see here.

But yeah: so it’s really really really fucking nice to see someone else seeing your stuff. Whatever one might say about the stuff in question (and a lot of this is debatably not even “my stuff”), it feels SO GOOD to see it from a point of view that is somehow liberated from your own weatherbeaten prism. Like an eyeball massage or someshit. Yes.

Anyway. I’m just sayin’. Wanted to share and all. You should do this, really, if you’re stuck: have your friend do your portfolio, and do theirs in return. It’ll be awesome.

And yeah I’m sure you already know all this shit already, but I am nothing if not grotesquely naive. I mean, I got swindled out of my gizmos by a pituitary mutant. So you probably saw it all coming a mile away. C’est la guerre, no? Yis!

We had final crits for Reinfurt’s studio yesterday. I will tell you: I have seen some serious nonsense at crits, in my day. Up at iEAR, people would go through the most absurd shit to avoid confronting the truth about their work. Ditto RISD, of course. But yesterday’s bullshit was super fucking unprecedented, in like every way. I am not going to go into it, really; it’d end up being a bunch of “and he was like … and so we were all like …” type of stuff, but I will in fact offer the following images as proof of the utter histrionic catastrophe that it was.

Figure 1. Rob Giampetro hitting a fucking piñata with a broom handle.

Figure 2. Isaac being all like “WHAT THE FUCK??”

Figure 3. Me being all like “WHAT THE FUCK??”

Figure 4. Bethany Johns being all like “WHAT THE FUCK??”, Sesame Street style.

… so yeah. Most of it wasn’t quite as ridiculous, but that ending there took some serious cake, I’d say. Blaaaaagh. This is why people so frequently roll their eyes when uttering the phrase “graduate school”, isn’t it? It really is, really, like for reals. Yes.

But yes. Things are wrapping up nicely, here. For example, our MFA graduate show opened up the other night. Considering they’re having it in the Providence convention center this year (vs. the RISD museum, which is being renovated or somesuch), I’m pleased to say it actually kind of works. Usually this show consists primarily of the second-rate crapola that people have lying around their studios after their big final crits or final shows, or what have you, but in this case people pulled it together and rocked out. Also, the show itself was well-considered enough to work at the rather massive “convention center” scale, which was, like, a pleasant suprise. Indeeeeed. Breanne has pictures up, too. Yes.

Anyway. Now I’m in New York. Going to look at sublets… if you have a sublet that I could rent from you for june/july/august, and involves NO ROOMMATES and preferably is in Greenpoint, then by all means, lemme at it. Otherwise yeah, wish me luck, and I’ll meet you at the Shake Shack in two weeks for lunch. Fuck yes!

-fish

PS. Even more on SpeakUp / WDC, this time on intellectual property and ripping people off. Fun times. Yes!