New Works

Here are some New Works: Inside Out, Bright Ideas, Opening Up, Guns Shooting Flowers.
You can visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronwexler/
for better resolution, more images and more info.

Spokes-Snacks

There are few things in this world that perplex and digust me more than Spokes-Snacks.
If you find cannibalism delicious or at least generally agreeable - well, you're going to have
problems with my logic/imagination.
Let me start off with Mr. Peanut. You know, the Planters peanut mascot-spokes-snack.
He's half man (a gentile man) annnnnd half peanut. He's shown in commercials throughout the years
dancing with and chuming it up with humans. He likes to have a good time while promoting the consumption
of his fellow brethren. I've even seen him enjoying a handful of peanuts. Does anyone raise an eyebrow to that?...NO.
But don't we consider him a sanctioned being, one of us, semi equal rights even? We as a people don't condone cannibalism right? Well, what the hell is going on then? Mr. Peanut is eating his own people! And furthermore, what if in real life and by real life I mean commercials, what if I went up to Mr. Peanut, stole his monacle an cracked him open with a crowbar?
What would I find inside? Is he internally made of peanuts? Maybe. But if he's eating, that implies that he has a digestive track
and internal organs. I would assume so especially since he has cognitive thought (a brain?) and senses.
Yes a sanctioned being not a robot. I would call some sort of humane society and have Mr. Peanut thrown in jail or possibly a
mental institution. (*I very much enjoy planters peanuts and in no way am I criticizing the quality of their product).
Next let's move on to the M&M's characters. Again, human attributes: they talk, express feelings, interact with other humans.
The humans never try to eat them though. That would be wrong. So why is okay to watch the M&M guys eat each other?
Even worse, we watch them sell out their lesser buddies for human consumption. This is better for our kids to watch then
Faces of Death? Where are our values? It's really sick if you think about it. But we're not supposed to.
Finally the old Twinkie The Kid. A childlike annimated Twinkie eating itself, yeah that's good. No further argument necessary.

Elizabeth Murray

While in Grad School at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago I was lucky enough to share some time with Elizabeth Murray. She was my favorite studio visitor. Insightful, thoughtful, encouraging and honest. About two years ago I saw a mini retrospective of hers at MoMa (one of many I'm guessing). While I'm not a fan of every period of her work I am a fan
of the organic progression of her work and career. I hope that I am able to capture the same freedom and fun she seemed
to have.

The renowned painter, who died this week at 66, focused many of her colorful paintings on domestic objects — but they had an edge. Murray's friends in the art world say that the edginess reflected a long struggle in the art world.
Murray was born in Chicago in 1940 to a working-class family that struggled to make ends meet. A teacher encouraged her to go to art school, and she eventually attended the Art Institute of Chicago and Mills College in Oakland, Calif. But she faced prejudice because of her class and gender.
Robert Storr, the Dean of the Yale School of Art who curated Murray's 2005-06 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, says Murray's work masked her anger.
"There's a great deal of pain and a great deal of tragedy and a great deal of anger in her work," he says. "So she expresses that anger and that pain in forms that seem kind of comfortable ...when you get close to them you realized that they can bite."
Murray drew inspiration from Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock, and from cartoons and comic books. Many of her paintings literally jumped out of the wall with bulging canvases that pushed into galleries. In the late 1960s and early '70s, female artists such as Nancy Graves hid their gender to get ahead in the art world. But Murray's subject matter made it harder to conceal her identity because it was drawn from domestic life. Indeed, family life was central for Murray, who married twice and had three children.
Murray's fans say that in the 1970s, she helped reinvigorate the art of painting at a time when sculpture was in. She was also an inspiration for many women who followed in her footsteps. Kathy Halbreich, director of the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis, curated Murray's first big show in 1988 at the Dallas Museum of Art. She says that Murray changed her life.
"She gave a lot of women a sense of possibility," Halbriech says. "It was just about being grounded. It was about caring about family. It was about caring for friends. It was about caring about making art because it was an important thing to do and meaningful thing to do."
Murray died of complications from lung cancer at her home in upstate New York.

Bears eat man at beer festival

BELGRADE, Serbia (Reuters) -- A 23-year old Serb was found dead and half-eaten in the bear cage of Belgrade Zoo at the weekend during the annual beer festival.

The man was found naked, with his clothes lying intact inside the cage. Two adult bears, Masha and Misha, had dragged the body to their feeding corner and reacted angrily when keepers tried to recover it.

"There's a good chance he was drunk or drugged. Only an idiot would jump into the bear cage," zoo director Vuk Bojovic told Reuters.

Local media reported that police found several mobile phones inside the cage, as well as bricks, stones and beer cans.

Anyone a good editor?

Hey All,
I'm going to submit my 4 part essay on my relationship to vegetables to the New York Times magazine (my first blog entries from about a month ago).
The whole thing is too long. I have to edit it down. I'm terrible at that though. I can barely spell.
If anyone would like to give it a shot in exchange for a small drawing/collage or something, let me know.
Thanks.

p.s. Must have sense of humor, good smarts and a troubled childhood.

Japanese biker fails to notice missing leg

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- A Japanese biker failed to notice his leg had been severed below the knee when he hit a safety barrier, and rode on for 2 km (1.2 miles), leaving a friend to pick up the missing limb.

The 54-year-old office worker was out on his motorcycle with a group of friends in the city of Hamamatsu, west of Tokyo, on Monday, when he was unable to negotiate a curve in the road and bumped into the central barrier, the Mainichi Shimbun said.

He felt excruciating pain, but did not notice that his right leg was missing until he stopped at the next junction, the paper quoted local police as saying.

The man and his leg were taken to hospital, but the limb had been crushed in the collision, the paper said.

The Nature of City, Barry Bonds and Lobster

For the first time in nearly two years I’m making art outside of Brooklyn.
I don’t take many vacations in general, the art residencies I’ve attended count as “vacations” to me. I work a lot and unfortunately my brain does too. Often I can’t figure out which needs a break more, my brain or my body. It took me until the age of thirty to realize that both are intrinsically connected (I’m 32 now). If I didn’t start to stop and smell the roses my art would suck and my health would crash and burn. This trip to Cape Cod (Orleans to be exact) is just what the doctor ordered. However, at first I had trouble getting acclimated. To begin with I have an estranged relationship to nature. I often joke with my natively natured friends that I was raised in a dumpster. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, I just played in some and my mother would cry if she heard I went around telling people that. Being raised by a single mom we didn’t exactly make regular trips to exotic lands. Philly has some nice parks but they’re all within the scope of half-day-trips. The kind of nature I’m talking about is the kind you could die in (*see earlier blog entry about Emily). That’s not to say that I didn’t almost die in Fairmont Park, Philly.
I remember one insane sunny summer day me and Howie Goldman dressing up as ninjas, running through junkyard creeks and throwing Chinese stars at each other. Not to mention the impromptu bon fires made of trash to celebrate victory (and pubescent angst). The quiet kind of nature is what I’m experiencing now.
Or maybe it’s experiencing me considering I feel greatly outnumbered by woodland animals, insects and deadly wild growths. I feed the bunnies carrots and run from the wasps. I sweat and smell gross and Lucky doesn’t mind… until it’s time to get in to bed. I’m making some work in an attic studio guarded by a Ben Shahn portrait – awesome! Now this is the difficult acclimation part: On the way up here I thought I’d be alone with my thoughts, besides Lucky that is. I pictured that I’d have immediate revelations in my new environment. All the good stuff would glow and all the bad stuff would fade. For the first week I was here though, I thought very little. At times my mind was semi blank. Calm I guess.
I didn’t want to think about the direction of my work, the benefits of clean living, what to do about family problems, if the Knicks will suck again this season.
I found myself just looking around, breathing, eating slowly. This is what I realized: So much of city living is reacting. There is a constant sense of fighting to survive (especially on a 90 degree day in Red Hook). All the SUV’s running you down, the thugs, the deadlines, the lines, running to stand still… and so on.
Your body is in a constant state of bracing and your mind in a constant state of reacting. Well out here there isn’t much to fight against, hence the semi blankness. The trouble with making art was that I’d have to reconnect to NY art world Aaron to complete the circuit. It took about a week but I’m back to thinking about not-so-zen things. When I go back to Brooklyn I’ll have to reconnect with bunny feeding Aaron to keep things level.

…So Barry Bonds did it. We knew it was coming. And he knew all the questions
about steroids were coming along with it. One popular argument “for” him is that plenty of ball players have been doping for years… so what’s the dif? My argument “against” him (and that) is that we have to start looking at people individually. Individuals must be accountable for their own actions! If you’re wondering how baseball history will digest this, just picture five years from now. There is no way he’s going to be held as deeply in collective heart of
baseball as Hank Aaron.

…Lobster. Hey, if you’re cool with eating giant cockroaches with claws, that’s your thing.

Favorite Things Part2

I'll be away for a bit, I'm leaving these in my place.