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Generations- Box 13 ArtSpace, Houston

May 20th, 2009
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I am doing a window installation (Window Box) at Box 13 ArtSpace that opens this Saturday, May 23rd from 7-9:30 pm and will run through June 25th.

Heers what they had to write about it- I was really lazy and wrote an explanation of “I dream in flea markets” or some crapola like that:

In Tim Brown’s Generations, using the pastiche of flea markets and antique malls, the artist stocks his would-be booth with leftover relics of his childhood. Though nothing is actually for sale in this window display, a printed guide will lead you through the shelves and tables of wares, detailing the commodity of his younger life. Outside a mournful tune plays like an ode to the past.

That sounds a lot better.

Here’s some studio photos of the work before installation

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Bayanihan- Work From Manila- Okay Mountain

May 9th, 2009

I curated a show of friends from Manila as a result of my travels there in Nov/Dec of 2007. I’m really proud of the work in the gallery, and a couple of days ago, it was honored by the Austin Critics’ Table as a nominee for best Group Gallery Exhibition in Austin this last year.

So far, there’s been a few local articles written about it:

Austin American-Statesman

and

…might be good

and, finally my friends Zach McDonald and Matthew Rodriguez did this awesomely hilarious coverage on their art blog Circus Gold.

The show will be running for a couple of more weeks, so please come see it before it comes down. I’m happy to open up the gallery if you cannot make it there during regular hours, so please contact me at unotito (at) gmail.com

April 18th, 2009- May 23rd, 2009
Opening reception Saturday, April 18th, 7-10pm
Regular Gallery Hours: Wednesday 7-9pm, Saturday 12-5pm

Okay Mountain
1312 E. Cesar Chavez Ste B (entrance on Navasota Street)
Austin Tx 78702

Artists featured:

Poklong Anading
Bea Camacho
Mariano Ching
Lena Cobangbang
Louie Cordero
Romeo Lee
Kaloy Olavides
Gary-Ross Pastrana
MM Yu

Bayanihan, the fourth installment of our international “No American Talent” series, is a new show of artists from the Philippines curated by Mountaineer Tim Brown. The title refers to a term with many meanings- Bayanihan can be a place, like a town, state or nation, but it can also be a spirit of community shared between people that literally means “being a hero to one another.” In this show, we present a varied group of 9 emerging artists who address this complex word and the relationship they share with their families, their city, their country, and each other.

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The Listening Post at Lawndale Art Center, Houston

April 3rd, 2009

I opened my first solo show “The Listening Post,” at the Lawndale on March 13th. Please check it out if you haven’t already- it runs until April 18th in Houston.

The show involved a three-cubicle installation, one large painting of 200 portraits, a grid of sixteen log book sketches I had drawn as I spoke to Houstonians on the phone, and recordings of some of the phone calls I had taken over the two month period.

Here’s the show statement:

As with everything, this show started small. There I sat , in Austin, summer of 2003, hunched over a cubicle at a dead-end call center job, drawing pictures of tombstones on Post-it Notes while I talked with people about cancer. I was miserable.

Then I took a call from a woman in Dallas. A Talker. A gum-smacking Talker who would not shut up. I’m a extremely patient listener, but this woman was driving me up the wall. I picked up a pen and drew a woman with a big mouth, then I drew another woman with a bigger mouth, then a bigger mouth. The more she talked, the more I drew, and the bigger her damn mouth became. It made me happy, like I was controlling the exchange somehow. We ended the call, and I had a drawing.

My next day off, I bought a sketchbook and a couple of black felt tip pens. I drew a grid of eight rectangles on the page, and whenever I had a chance during one of the 35 or more calls I took a day, I drew what I thought the caller looked like on the other side of the line and noted the city from which they called. When I finally quit my job six months later, I had two hundred and fifty portraits. The large painting here is the culmination of that sketchbook series.

At some point, I realized that talking to strangers wasn’t the reason I was miserable at my call center job. I was miserable because my job dictated what I had to talk about, and that meant not being myself. What if I removed all of the “jobbiness” of taking calls from the public and just interacted with strangers with my own rules? Nothing to sell, nothing to say, no agenda, no answers, no questions, no needs, and no rules. What would that feel like?

The Listening Post was born. For the last two months, I’ve advertised a toll free number with a variety of messages in the Houston Press and on Craigslist. I’ve gotten quite a few calls, and have drawn portraits of the callers and taken notes during our interactions. For about a month now, I have recorded our conversations (with their consent) and I’ve realized that The Listening Post isn’t just an intake process- it’s also a performance.

People like to think that they need an expert to figure things out for them. I do- that’s why I listen to Fresh Air and watch Judge Judy and pay for someone to do my taxes. But after having talked through a lot of problems with people these last two months, I think all we really need is to have someone listening.

If you need to talk, I want to listen. 1-877-EARS KNOW.

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Okay Mountain at Paragraph Gallery, Kansas City Mo.

January 22nd, 2009

I just got some photos from fellow mountaineer Carlos Rosales-Silva of our collective’s installation at the Project Space of Paragraph Gallery. The show, which was a redux of the show we did at Creative Research Laboratory in Austin, was called “It’s Gonna Be Reverything.” We’ve garned a couple of shows from these shows, so the collaborative effort looks to be booked through 2010. We’re pretty stoked about it.

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Austin Ventures Mural: review and final photos

December 7th, 2008

I realized that i hadn’t done a followup for the earlier entry that showed the mural in progress, so I have a couple of links here that should give you a little information about the final product.

First of all, local poet and writer Dan Boehl did a great job giving a sense of scale, context, and the experience of the mural in this article published in …might be good. Check it out for additional background.

And local photographer Andy Mattern was kind enough to do a series of final portraits of the finished tableux.

Nathan Green, co-mountaineer, posted a bunch of the in-process photos on the Arthouse blog as well.

More soon on the Okay Mountain group show “It’s Gonna Be Reverything” at the Project Space of Paragraph Gallery in Kansas City, Mo.


Austin Ventures Mural Project

August 23rd, 2008

Here is photographic evidence of a mural project that Okay Mountain has been doing this summer. Dave Bryant was instrumental in getting the ball rolling for us. It’s a series of 10 small (smallest 6′x3′) and large (largest 40′ x8′) tableaux that is an allegory about how an idea is brought to the marketplace and the pitfalls and rewards along the way. A character created by Ryan Hennessee, Oliver, shows the progress of the person behind the idea as he makes his way from initial inspiration, to germinating the idea, working with investors to fund the idea, producing and marketing the idea, overlooking it’s progress in a fickle economy, and finally reaping the rewards of his work.
Throughout the tableaux, a game board path with directives (i.e. go ahead 3 spaces) ties everything together.

After the idea was hatched by Dave, Sterling Allen, Ryan Hennessee, and Justin Goldwater, Justin went about giving all of us drawing assignments, and incorporated our different drawing styles into elements unified by a central theme given to each tableau. Here are some inital photos of the work phase of the project, with more to come.

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Search Terms Say The Darndest Things

April 18th, 2008

Through my website, I can check out how people are getting to this blog in a variety of ways– In the past, I’ve treated myself to a laugh riot by looking at search terms that have been leading people to my site. Sometimes it’s not the standard combination of words:

“slightly weirded out emotional feelings”– I have no comment on this one.

“hotdogs are good with ketchup slang phrase”
— I have written about food, and a little about foreign languages, but I’m hard pressed to figure out where this comes from.

“how do i say thali?” - this one warms my heart ‘cuz I know I’ve helped another confused soul– I used to be this person. It’s the name of a typical Indian dish.

“backpacker salvation army mumbai surf — pure poetry, if you ask me. more stuff from my India entries

“booby pillows” I used this name for the clouds in my Manila installation, I think.

My entry on dirty words in Tagalog has brought quite a few fantastic search terms that aren’t exactly for the faint of heart:

“dirty words in tagalog”- cut to the chase, already
“tagalog tingle”- sounds like a jingle
“filipino words are flexible”
“boy brotsa”– wha?
and the unimaginable search term: “vagina smegma” Um, hi dad.

Unpredictably, I also get a lot of search term mileage from a passage I wrote about a gay man coming on to me in an Indian train station and another advance at a park in Ahmedabad, Gujarat– I mean, how was I to know that I was using popular nomenclature from the Indian Gay Underground? Go ahead and Google “Ahmedabad homosex” and remember this is a city of 4.2 million people-

“ahmedabad sex guide / ahmedabad night life” sorry, you’ve come to the wrong place folks!
“ahmedabad homo sex”, or if you please “homo sex in ahmedabad”
“gals homosex”
“ahmedabad park gay”– hey, I know where that is!
“gay ahmedabad”– fyi, homosexuality is illegal in the Subcontinent.

Having a name like mine makes a high placement on a search page a tough row to hoe– I have, however, moved up mightily since the article in the Statesman was published– next to some CS professor in Colorado with the sci-fi inspired “Timothy X. Brown,” the only Tim Brown on the internet who can hold a candle to yours truly is a Former Heisman Trophy Winner and Football Hall of Fame Alum. I like the clarity of the search terms that found my site. It’s something I’m not bold enough to carve out for myself most of the time:

“tim brown cartoonist”
“tim brown - art”
“timothy brown social worker texas”
“tim brown sculptor”
“tim brown portraits austin”
“artwork by tim brown”
“strong senders and tim brown”

and the weirdly awesome “tiny tim brown”

Alas, all good things must end:

“you re long time dead”


Austin American Statesman Video and Article

January 22nd, 2008
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By Corrie MacLaggan
Monday, January 07, 2008

When Tim Brown worked at an Austin-based hot line for cancer patients around the country, he listened to callers’ deeply personal stories and worries about pain and healing. He gave them information about their type of cancer and connected them with support groups.

And then, because of the nature of the job, he never talked to them again.

In an attempt to create some continuity — and to break the monotony of the phone calls — he started sketching what he imagined the faraway callers might look like. Those sketches inspired a series of paintings he created in his East Austin studio.

“You’re only going on faith that it was making a difference,” said Brown, 39, who said his background in social work left him with a desire to follow up with people.

More than three years after leaving his job at the American Cancer Society’s National Cancer Information Center, Brown has used the images to produce 10 paintings, each with a grid of 20 faces. Near each face is the place the person called from: “Bristol, VA,” “Canyon City, CO,” “Grand Prairie, TX.” Or “Unknown.”

The cartoon-style portraits range from wrinkled to youthful, plump to rail-thin. There are brown faces, white faces and sickly green faces: “A veritable quilt of life and death in these United States,” Brown wrote in his blog.

The series, “Strong Senders,” takes its name from the idea that people can psychically send their energy; in this case, Brown said, so strongly that he picked it up on the other end of the phone line.

“I talked to all these people, and more importantly, listened to them,” Brown wrote. “They all made an impression on me. I, in turn, made an impression of them.”

Brown started working at the call center shortly after moving to Austin in 1999. His mother had just died of brain cancer.

His job title: cancer information specialist.

His task: using an American Cancer Society database of up-to-date information, answer callers’ questions about different kinds of cancer and treatments. Help people find wigs or medical equipment. Send brochures.

“A lot of times, people just wanted to talk,” Brown said. “I wasn’t just seeing the public faces of people. They were putting niceties to the side, expressing pain, joy.”

He heard a lot about people’s difficulties with health insurance.

“You had to absorb a lot of anger,” he said. “I’m amazed people can do it as long as they do.”

Kevin Babb, strategic director of the National Cancer Information Center, said it doesn’t surprise him that Brown turned to art.

“I think people have to de-stress,” said Babb, who arrived at the call center after Brown left. “Everyone has their own way of dealing with it.”

The call center has moved into spacious new quarters with a relaxation room, where representatives can watch a virtual crackling fire on a flat-screen TV or thumb through a National Geographic magazine after a stressful call.

In his four years at the call center, Brown estimates, he spoke with 30,000 people.

There was no time limit for the calls.

During long calls, he doodled. In 2003, Brown — who has a bachelor’s degree in painting — brought a sketchbook to work.

Some callers were easy to visualize. One portrait, “Unknown,” has spiky reddish hair and a black tank top. The man had called from his job at a convenience store wanting help quitting smoking. While talking to Brown, he was selling cigarettes.

“He was crazy,” Brown said. “He said: ‘I’m celebrating, man. I just woke up a year ago from a coma.’ It was his waking-up-from-a-coma birthday.”

Brown drew some symbolic portraits. A caller who threw a temper tantrum got an erupting volcano for a face.

By the time Brown left the job six months later, he had sketched 250 portraits.

Later, he traced 20 at a time onto a single sheet of paper, then painted the background and faces with gouache, an opaque watercolor. Finally, like a cartoonist, he inked in the faces.

Brown, who helps run the Okay Mountain gallery, also works part-time for a nonprofit organization that backs access to public transportation for people with disabilities.

In the afternoons, he works in his studio, where he’s planning to spend much of 2008 on a final “Strong Senders” piece: a giant painting with 200 faces. He’s also working on a book he expects to publish next year about the faces and the stories behind them.

He took a call from a Mickey Mantle once, as well as an Elizabeth Taylor and two Lois Lanes.

There was also a caller named Tim Brown.


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December 3rd, 2007

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Being Tagalog ain’t easy…

December 2nd, 2007

…but with the help of friends, I’ve started to compiled all the weird and cool words I’ve heard people say in my month there– and being a lifelong pottymouth, I’ve also included all of the vile words I could come up with as well.
IF YOU DO NOT APPRECIATE DIRTY WORDS DO NOT READ THIS ENTRY.

In no particular order:

Tara– slang for “Let’s go”
Jeprox– this is slang for government project housing, or as said in the Black Community, “The PJs.” This word takes the PJ slang and reverses the letters and creates a word from that. I’ve found that Filipinos love the pun, and that wordplay is rampant– Tagalog is a very flexible language like English, but it has the extra advantage that English can also be used at will, in a mashup of the languages known as Taglish.
Putang ina mo– simply put, motherfucker– spanish derivative
Chupa- blowjob– more spanish, eh?
baduy- used a lot by friends, it refers to a cheesiness found in 70’s era things– disco cheese, if you will.
jolog– same cheese, different era– this one being like 90’s cheese, think of the husky voice that stupid singer from the band Creed has and you get an idea of the essence of jolog.
pogi rock– sucky pretty-boy rock bands that have taken over Filipino popular music. Definitely derrogatory term.
supot– being uncircumsized– to say someone is supot is offensive unless you are friends, then it kind of means you think they are a scrub
TNT or Tago ny Tago– literally it means “hide and hide,” it is a phrase for Filipinos living and working abroad illegally, specifically in the United States.
Malupit- slang for really good, in a way that the object of praise shows a command of something.
Astig- very good, it appeals to my sensibilities
Brocha- going down on a woman– also means a used up paint brush!
Brotsa- same as above
bilat- vagina
kupal- the notorious counterpart to smegma, or dickcheese.
tinggil- clitoris, pronounced “tingle” (!)
tuli- circumcized
madumi– means dirty in a sexual way
nangamatis– literally means “swollen tomatoes,” the counterpart to blue balls.