The Iron Git

Me, my brothers and the ex WWF Champion Iron Sheik in a Howard Johnson's hotel, Orlando Florida, August 1986.

Springtime In Chicago (as seen from our back porch)

Two Of My All-Time Favorite Photographers

These are two of my favorite photographs of all time, one by Brian Ulrich and one by Roy Decarava. There's a connection between these two images besides the coat hangers, maybe it's the silent quality that they both have. Brian and the lovely Rachelle spent their sunday today helping to paint our new apartment. After-words, we went to an amazing German restaurant around the corner to eat wurst and to talk over the confusing difficulties of being a mid-western artist in this day and age. Like presumably everyone in our field, I sometimes feel overwhelmed and insecure about trying to navigate the contemporary art world. Brian and Rachelle are two of my best friends and had lots of great advise for me, I'm lucky to have such wonderful friends.

The End Of An Era (Part 3)

November 29, 2006: The infamous rat incident. You learn new things every day watching surveillance footage of your garbage cans. I, for instance, had no idea that rats could be so resourceful when seeking out food. You gotta respect the little bastards ...

The End Of An Era (Part 2)

This is one of my personal favorites: On August 8, 2007, my cat Wally became intrigued with something outside the of window and stuck his head in front of the camera. Look at those cheeks . . .

The End Of An Era (Part 1)

Today marks the start of the last week of filming for The Garbage Can Project. Robin and I will be moving to a new apartment next weekend and so on this, the final week of filming, I've decided to make a daily post featuring one video highlight per day. The above clip is from March 12, 2007 and features one of our cans being stolen in the middle of the night.

Didn't Your Mama Ever Tell You . . .

Didn't your mama ever tell you not to chew your finger nails? Well the above photograph is evidence of why she was right. I spent all of this past thursday night watching "The WB" in the Emergency Room at Rush Hospital waiting for a doctor to take a look at my infected pinky finger.

I guess I'm lucky but I've only ever been in the emergency room three times and each time for something completely weird. The first time that I went I was eight or nine years old and had been camping with my family in The Berkshire Mountains. I had a rather severe case of poison ivy and I woke up one morning with webbed hands. Overnight, all of the poison ivy blisters had merged together to form a wall of blister. My parents took me to the ER where they cut the blisters, wrapped my hand and sent me on my way.

The second time that I went to the ER I must have been about twelve or thirteen and like all of the cool kids at school, I had just gotten my right ear pierced. The day after it was pierced I had a baseball game and while I was at bat I had to wear a batting helmet that had hard plastic ear flaps. Needless to say, after three times at bat my ear had become so infected that it swelled up over the earing. After the game I went to the ER where they pulled the earing out through the back of my lobe. My ear is permanently pierced as a result despite the fact that I haven't worn an earing since.

My visit to the ER this past week was perhaps the stupidist visit of all. I injured my hand by chewing on my nails. I'm a chronic nail biter and must have been absentmindedly chewing away when I ripped my pinky nail a bit too far. A few days and a thousand germs later, my pinky swelled up like a beach ball and became discolored and disgusting.

A few days and a few anti-biotics later, the moral of the story is clear: Stop Chewing Your Nails People, Your Mama Was Right!!!!!

2 Weeks til' Moving Day (and a whole assload of boxes)

Here We Go Again

Well it is moving time once again. Robin and I just found a great new apartment on the north side of town and are getting ready to make the big move on March 1. For me, the first step of moving involves sorting through all of the stuff that I've accumulated in order to pair down and organize. Yesterday was day one of "Operation Nostalgia" and I came across some lost gems.


"The Three Bad Girls." During the summer of 1997, I had a job as a cook in the nursing home where my mother works in Croton NY. In August I moved to Guatemala where I felt more than a little homesick and where I eagerly awaited letters from back home. This photograph is of three of my co-workers from the nursing home, a real gem of a photograph (taken my Mama Git).

This photograph was made in the Spring of 2001 and is from my very first nude photo shoot. I was working as a bartender in NY prior to relocating to Chicago and was one day approached by a waitress who asked me if I would take some nude photographs of her. I was excited for all of the obvious reasons but also because I had always loved the old nude photographs of Andre Kertesz. As excited as I was, I was also very nervous. So on one of my days off she came to my parents house, took off her clothes and asked me what she should do. Feeling that I should be "pure" to my art, I set about shooting a few roles of the most conservative nude photographs you've ever seen. The whole thing was incredibly awkward, she wanted Playboy Centerfolds and I gave her images straight out of the urine stained apartments of a Dostoevsky novel. Oh young Git, so much to learn . . .

This photograph is from 2003 during a road trip with my friend Matt. I was helping him with a film that he was making as well as playing the role of a balding alien. This haircut was truly disgusting although it did get props in a Minneapolis dive bar where a punk rock girl came up to me and told me how much she loved my "Drunk Uncle."


This is a photograph that one of my parents took at their home in NY. It's the view of the back porch under a heavy blanket of snow. I love this shot.


So boys and girls, believe it or not there once existed a currency in Europe before the Euro!!! This is a two Franc piece from my first trip to Europe. As an undergrad, my studies had been devoted almost exclusively to the writings of Albert Camus. Camus has always been a real hero to me and I nearly wet my pants when I found myself in Paris walking the same streets that he had once traversed on a bicycle dressed in a nun outfit during the occupation.


Here we have a shot of Young Git reclining on his Grandmother's couch in Yonkers NY (circa 1986). I used to think this pink polo shirt was "The Bomb" (eat your heart out Kanye West!)


And finally, here we have photograph by the young Brian Ulrich from back when he was a mere student in grad school. I'm not sure if he ever did anything with this photograph but I've always had a real soft spot for it (this is from around the time that he was first beginning his Copia project).

And so, I'm off to pack some more. I'm sure there will be plenty more artifacts in the weeks to come.

Get Out And Vote!!!

Can You Dig It?

Click the photo to enlarge

Items of Clothing Secretly Hidden By My Girlfriend (So That I Wouldn't Wear Them Anymore)

This morning I published a new project to my website. "Items of Clothing Secretly Hidden By My Girlfriend (So That I Wouldn't Wear Them Anymore)" has been on the back burner ever since I found a bag containing some of my clothes in the back of Robin's closet. Apparently she had been confiscating things each time she did the laundry. The complete inventory can be seen by clicking here.

Paris and Me at Art Basel Miami

Well it's been a week and a half since the insanity of the Miami Art Fairs and slowly life returns to normal. I wish that I could take credit for the above picture but it was taken by good friend and amazing artist Julian Montague. Without a doubt, the best part of the weekend was catching up with old friends. As has become standard in the past few years, I shared a hotel room with my two other wives Brian Ulrich and Matt Siber; however, this time we were also blessed with the company of the wonderful and talented Sonja Thomsen. Highlights included running around town with Nate Baker, cocktails with Alec Soth, dinner and introductions with Taj Forer, not nearly enough quality time with Amy Stein, breakfast with Cody Hudson, gallery chatting with Michael Foley and Tom Gitterman, and on and on and on. Of course for me, the absolute highlight was spending a ton of quality time with the Munich gang: Nicole, George, Mark and Florence. Oh yes, and I can't forget Paris. Hopefully she spent some of her time buying art in addition to shoes.

The Git's Mix

I confess, I have been a terrible blogger this past month but I have a very good excuse: I've been working on my brand new mix tape for this, my most ambitious blog entry to date. I've been making mix tapes for as long as I can remember - memories of sitting in my parent's dining room with a boombox and a tape recorder trying to follow Cyndi Lauper' s "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" with Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus [The Salieri Mix]." In high school my tools became more sophisticated when I bought a boombox that had a double tape deck and later a stereo with cd -> cassette. The mix tapes from this period consisted of songs by The Who, The Doors, Blues Traveller and The Steve Miller Band (no snide remarks, please).

In college I used to make a mix tape for every season: Fall (Neil Young, The Guess Who), Winter (early 70's Miles Davis, Herbie Mann), Spring (The Byrds, The Zombies), Summer (A Tribe Called Quest, Beck). During my Sophomore Year of college I began to write a music column in the school newspaper with my friend Drew. The name of the column was "Awesome Sounds" and my pen name was "The Comeback Bitch" (I was good at dramatic comebacks in Streetfighter 2) and Drew's pen name was "F2" (He would only buy items from the F2 slot on the campus vending machine). Each saturday night we would put on our Union Suits (one piece thermals with a butt flap for all of you non-New Englanders) and our Sorel boots, trudge through the deep Vermont snow down to the music room, smoke a joint and proceed to listen to music and record our reactions. Click HERE to read our column from February 23, 1995.

In the past few years my mix tapes have become less and less frequent, averaging out at about one per year. The last real gem was entitled, "Songs To Make You Throw Up In Your Mouth" which I created with the sole intent of seducing my girlfriend (she's now my wife so I guess that it worked). I would say that these days, the majority of my music listening takes place on the train during my morning commute to downtown Chicago. There are certain songs that over the past few months, I've found myself continually gravitating towards and repeatedly listening to. The idea struck me that it would be fun to build a mix of these songs and hand it out through my blog. Unlike John Cusack in High Fidelity, my mix isn't aimed at expressing an emotion or an attitude, rather it's simply what I've been listening to lately. It has taken me two months to build this collection (build, listen, re-edit, listen, rearrange, listen, re-edit, listen, etc.) and on that note . . . I hope you enjoy:




The first song on the mix is by one of my favorites, Sufjan Stevens. For those of you not familiar with his work, Sufjan embarked in 2004 on a project to write an album for each of the fifty states. To date, he has created albums for Michigan and for Illinois (where this track is from) and is rumored to be working on albums for the states of Oregon and Rhode Island. This is a great track for listening to on headphones, it is extremely layered and beautiful with his voice floating in and out throughout the background tracks of the song. I guess with Chicagraphy on the mind, I couldn't resist starting of the mix with a song devoted to my beloved Chicago. The image of him crying in a van with his friend is just too much, I recommend all of his albums.




The next track is "Any Major Dude Will Tell You" by Steely Dan. I must say, I'm not a huge Steely Dan fan (I find a lot of their music to be kind of cheesy) but Pretzel Logic is a great album. Oddly enough, the first time that I heard this song was a cover version by Wilco. In any case, who couldn't love a song that starts of with the lyrics, "I never seen you looking so bad my funky one." Steely Dan always makes me think of my friend Elizabeth, they were heavily in her rotation when we used to live together in Boston.




This next track is a new favorite, Free's "Oh I Wept" from their 1970 album, "Fire and Water." Most famous for their song "All Right Now," Free eventually evolved into the awful 70's band "Bad Company." Embarrassingly enough, Bad Company were one of my favorite bands in Middle School. I used to play guitar to their song "Shooting Star" in my friend Tim Carroll's bedroom while he noodled away on Pink Floyd and U2 licks. The one thing I will say about "Shooting Star" is that it's featured in one of my favorite scenes in Kevin Smith's 1994 film Clerks (it's playing on the car stereo when they are driving to the funeral of Dante's friend). Despite all of these tangents, Paul Rodger's vocals are amazing and the song has pretty great groove.




The next song on the mix is Donovan's lost classic "Get Thy Bearings" from his 1968 album, "The Hurdy Gurdy Man". An odd footnote about this song: "Get Thy Bearings", was sampled by Biz Markie on his song "I Told You" from his album "I Need A Haircut" that was originally released in 1991, but recalled from shelves because Biz Markie had not properly cleared his samples. I first heard this song on a mix tape that was made for me by my good friend Carson Ellis. Carson is one of my oldest and dearest friends and we've been swapping mix tapes for more than ten years (you might know her artwork from the album covers of The Decemberists). At first I felt weird about taking a track from her latest mix only to put it on mine but hey, a great song is a great song.




This is a song by Bonnie Prince Billy entitled "Cursed Sleep" from his 2006 album "The Letting Go." I've been a fan of Will Oldham's for a long time and this track is really beautiful and brooding. For a pretty awesome side note on Will Oldham, Click Here to watch a pretty hilarious video featuring him and Zack Galifianakis in Kanye West's video, "Can't Tell Me."




This track is Badly Drawn Boy's song "About A Boy" from the soundtrack to the 2002 film by the same title. Ok, two very embarrassing things about this track: 1) I first heard it on a commercial for Hummer SUV's. The commercial features a little boy on an outing in the family Hummer who makes a snowball and saves it for show-and-tell at school. I found myself actually looking forward to the commercial and eventually figured out who it was by and purchased a copy. 2) The second embarrassing thing about this track is that it is from a film featuring Hugh Grant. The embarrassing thing is that I'm a sucker for pretty much anything featuring Hugh Grant which has led Robin to claim that I'm her best girlfriend ever. Oh the shame, the shame. . .




At this point the mix starts to get a little bit more upbeat with Belle and Sebastian's 2006 song "Funny Little Frog." I've been a Belle and Sebastian fan since my Boston days as well and despite the fact that their music can be a bit wimpy at times (as illustrated in Jack Black's rant in High Fidelity), this song is a keeper.




And so we get to The Clash with their 1980 classic, "Police On My Back." Originally written and performed by "The Equals," I was happy to see this song featured in last year's Judd Apatow film, "Knocked Up." The thing that I love about this track is the way in which the guitars mimic the sound of a European police siren. When I was in Munich this fall, I immediately though of this song every time a police car or an ambulance would pass by with its siren on (sirens sound different in the US). Although I'm still not sure about "Sandinista!" in its entirety, the album has definitely been growing on me in recent months.




Who knew that you could follow up The Clash with The Jackson 5 and create a smooth transition?!?!? I had always associated "Ready Or Not, Here I Come" with Lauren Hill and The Fugees 1996 album "The Score" but was excited last month when I came across The Jackson 5 original version from their 1970 classic, "Third Album." No matter what, I'll always have a soft spot for The Jackson 5 and for anything Michael Jackson that pre-dates "Bad" (but as Robin says, "poor Michael").




Next up we have Chicago's very own Lupe Fiasco with his track "Daydreamin' from his 2006 release, "Food and Liquor." I find the whole album to be pretty amazing but for me this is the stand out track (any song with the lyric, "I still got some damage from fightin the whitehouse" is alright by me). Not only is Lupe Fiasco smart in his critique of mainstream hip-hop culture, but he also teams up on this track with Jill Scott who is one of my all-time favorites (Philly has Jill Scott and Zoe Strauss all in the same city! I'm thinking about relocating).




And finally to bring it all back out (a la Ricky Gervais) we have Cat Stevens with his track "Maybe You're Right" from his 1970 release, "Mona Bone Jakon." A snarly song, it's got a classic Cat Stevens feel with being too overplayed on the radio. Well, I hope you've enjoyed this tour through my headphones of the past two months and if you're sitting at a desk and would like to hear my mix in its entirety, click play on the Quicktime button below and sit back, relax and take it all back in once again.

It All Comes Back Around (a picture from a picture)

Today I received an email from a man named Rob with this picture attached. This is the image that was made on February 27, 2007 and that is featured on my Garbage Can Project. It turns out that he works in the neighborhood and was out for a walk when he encountered the carts. In his words, "I guess everyone is watching everyone these days." I couldn't have said it better myself.

Attention All Photography Students . . .

I always find it so difficult to explain to my photo 1 students how to light a photograph . . . until now. Thank god for Tyra, this woman can do everything! Click here for Tyra Banks photo lecture 101 (warning to all photographers: this clip might make you throw up in your mouth).

NYUKI (Sleep Conversation, 9/17/07)

My wife has this incredibly evil habit of talking to me when I'm asleep to see if she can get me to enter into a nonsensical conversation with her. When it works, she writes it down. Here is our conversation from last night:

Robin: I love you
Me: I love your mom
Robin: You love my mom?
Me: Yeah
Robin: What about me?
Me: You're ok too
Robin: What's so great about my mom?
Me: Nyuki
Robin: What's Nyuki?
Me: It's what's so great about your mom
Robin: What is Nyuki?
Me: New and delicious human snacks

Memories of Munich

Brian and Matt and I returned from Munich last Sunday and after a few days of playing catch up, I finally have a moment to sit down and write a little something about the trip. I think the plans for this show really started a few years ago when we met Nicole (the director of the gallery) at Review Santa Fe.



The four of us hit it off incredibly well, met up in Miami this past winter and began talking about doing a show.


After arriving on Sunday morning, Brian and Nicole and I took a train to the Austrian Alps. Went to a small hilltop where George's parents live (George is Nicole's boyfriend and is hilarious) and spent two days eating, drinking amazing Austrian wine, hiking in the alps and sleeping / snoring off the jetlag. You can view some pictures from Austria by clicking HERE.


The following few days were spent working on installing the show, wandering around the streets of Munich and of course drinking a ton of beer. One of the best parts of installation was becoming friends with the lovely Ms. Florence Baur Pictured here juggling a coffee, a pretzel and a copy of my book Social Studies:






















I have posted a number of installation shots and they can be seen by clicking HERE.


On thursday, Matt and Brian and I took the subway out to the Octoberfest grounds. Octoberfest actually starts this week but it was really fun and interesting to watch everything being built. I had no idea what to expect and was thrilled to find what was more or less a huge carnival with gigantic empty beer halls. It isn't that often that I shoot a lot of pictures just for fun but I found myself inspired and started snapping away (so if anyone has any editorial work for me in the future- wink wink, nudge nudge). My photographs from Octoberfest are posted HERE.


Last friday was the big opening night. It was the opening of the Munich Art Season so every gallery in town was open and the streets were pretty mobbed. Talk, drink, talk, drink, if you've been to a few openings you've been to them all. A great time, I have a few photos posted HERE


The night of the opening, we all went back to George's apartment where we talked and drank and had a great time until about five in the morning. Needless to say, we all woke up a bit groggy the next day at about noon. Hangovers in tow, we went down to the gallery where Nicole and Florence had prepared a large traditional breakfast. There was a long table in the middle of the gallery filled with meat and pretzels and of course some more beer. Eat Drink Laugh, Eat Drink Laugh. At one point in the midst of all of this, a local Art Historian came in with a large tour group and began to discuss our work. It was a completely surreal experience, hilarious and unforgettable. To view photos of our hangover brunch click HERE.


After brunch, Matt and Brian and I went out to buy some goodies for our wives / girlfriends / fiancees. George was determined that before returning to the states, it was mandatory that we go sailing on his boat (One hour south of Munich). So Brian, Nicole, George, their friend Mark and I all loaded into a car (Matt was at dinner with his aunt and uncle) and headed out. There was absolutely no wind on the lake and the motor was dead but we had a great time drifting none the less. It was the perfect way to end the trip, one of those moments when you know that you are in the midst of future memory (look at me, I'm so deep...). To see the photos from our sailing excursion, click HERE


The next morning Brian and I left for the airport at 6am. I was so excited to see Robin and also pretty sad to say goodbye to my friends in Germany. It's hard to have people who you care about living so far away but we'll see each other again soon. And now to cap off my story, I got caught by US customs trying to smuggle some sausage into the country. Those Bastards!

For a random sampling of additional photos click HERE

Von Ulrich im Munchen

Live from Austria