Extra Virgin Press

Extra Virgin Press will preserve the art of letterpress by creating a space where the community can learn and practice this hand printed form of communication. After learning, teaching and printing for forty years in South Florida, I received a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for EVP. The Knight Arts Challenge Grant in the category of literature will bring writers to the press. Sensuous, handmade, multicolored, embossed, press printing will bring artists. EVP will work with arts organizations, writers, poets, artists, and institutions to create hand printed, small editions of books and art on paper. Common forms are chapbooks, prints, broadsheets, invitations, postcards, and posters. 

These forms will allow a full spectrum of individuals or collaborators to produce modestly priced, small format multiples in editions of 25-100 copies. It will also gather creative professionals around a small press to promote and document their work, in addition to creating conversations around local issues. Classes and press time will be available for students and community members. Artists/writers will also work with professional educators to bring small portable presses into schools and institutions, to give a voice to the young writers and artists in Miami.

Fall Semester

Fall Semester is an ongoing independent initiative for public discussion on contemporary society and culture. Through a series of public lectures, open conversations, and select online contributors, Fall Semester seeks to introduce new discourse into Miami and effect change through a cross-pollination of ideas across fields. 

Testing what can be achieved in a sped-up production of discourse, Fall Semester invites noted artists, theoreticians, critics, curators and cultural practitioners, to discuss ideas, then in turn calls on the participants to, in the format of a dialogue, develop a conversation from their respective positions. This initiative is in many ways an experiment in what can happen when new material—like a bomb-drop of new data—is rapidly introduced into local rhetoric. 

Founded in Summer 2013, Fall Semester was envisioned as an ongoing series and flexible, critical platform. The second iteration of Fall Semester will focus on identity, through discussion and overviews of the post-human, new aesthetic, capital consumption, and performativity. Public participation in Fall Semester is not limited by profession, status, merit, or income. It is a free and open forum to any who desire to contribute to or observe.

Balalaika

Balalaika is a slightly-larger-than-life spiritual duplicate of a Soviet era MiG-21 jet fighter. It can be viewed as an impermanent paper airplane made by a child. As a sculpture made by an adult, it is a solution incorporating all the elements of limitless imagination while retaining the refinement of age and experience. The project seeks to address the complex problems inherent in science, technology, and geopolitical realities. 

The project speaks to the temporary nature of life and objects. The airframe itself is approximately 52'x28'x18'. It will weigh approximately 3,200 pounds. Every switch functions—as do the landing gear, flaps, and rudder. To adhere to another element of its conceptual origin, it is all made entirely from paper (much of it custom fabricated on-site) and Elmer’s glue. The airplane is built to a 1.0588:1 scale to fit my frame. 

the sight of sound for Fringe Projects

the sight of sound uses simple sound displacement to create an alter-environement that looks backward and forward. Situating small, wireless speakers in 3-5 storm drains (with the co-operation of the City), I want to bring lost or out of place sounds into part of the (unlikely) built environment that will naturally amplify them. By using sound rather than sight, I hope people will be able to experience their surroundings in a different way, using different sensitivities. For the astute listener, this may conjure larger ideas, such as the loss of silence, of habitat, the approaching sea, industrialization. However, I hope it also creates a magical, uncanny encounter with art. There is the set, and then there is the soundtrack.