timlandia

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′) tableaus 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 tableaus, 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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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”

video link

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.

…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.

In one of the guidebooks someone wrote some to the effect “Manila is not a series of landmarks, rather a series of anecdotes.” This is a slight oversimplification of things, of course, but if you are at all familiar with World War II history, you are aware that the Japanese bombed most of what would be considered landmarks in Metro Manila, leaving the current architectural landscape relatively modern in nature– besides the ruins of the walled city of Intramuros, many guide books overlook Manila in favor of putting emphasis of the considerable ecotourism that lies outside of Manila and on other islands in the archipelago. My tour has been less of the site-seeing and more of the personal connections made in the art scene.

Although I find my self comfy and cosy here near middle class digs around Ateneo University in a very safe part of town, Wild Tales of the Nitty Gritty still come up in conversations here– they are both sensationalistic and also a reflection of the bloody past Filipinos have endured from the beginning of their written history.

One of the most compelling subjects I have heard about, through anecdotes and historical reference, is that of the Mystic Warrior, people who fight beyond the level of mere mortals through worship and using amulets imbued with the power to protect the warrior from death.

The islands of Mindanao and the Jolo island chain have always been a wild frontier in the minds of Filipinos, containing some of the most biologically diverse jungles and unspoiled nature as well as rambo-like warriors who have withstood attacks from several generations of assailants with much greater resources at their disposal, including the United States. To this day, for a Westerner to travel to parts of Western Mindanao or the Jolos is the best way to come back home headless in a body bag.

Jeremy, one of my many hosts here in Manila, served as vice-mayor during one of the more unstable times in the Lanao Province on the island of Mindanao, and was the only Christian politician in a Muslim area. He, of course, needed to win of the trust of Muslims in his area, and he was successful in this, fighting for the rights of the Muslim population by acting as a liaison who moderated skirmishes between rebels and the Feds. As a result of his deeds, he had what seems to be unparalleled access to rebel units living in the jungles around Lake Lanao– he had actually accompanied an international reporter as she covered a MNLF unit, living with them for a month.

Mindanao, an area that for anyone who knows anything about Filipino politics knows is a region of great strife between the Muslim population and the Christian settlers who were given premium lowland acreage for farming in the Western half of the island. This appropriation of land forced farmers into the surrounding hills and jungles to form guerilla fighting units that coalesced into political entity currently known as the as the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front), a splinter group from the late sixties formed MNLF (Muslim National Liberation Front) that through the years have had an on-again, off-again peace/war with Federal troups, depending upon the whims and political favor that could be gained by sitting presidents.

The US government claims ties between MILF and Al-Quaida, and this seems to more reality than illusion.

From our first conversation, Jeremy has known my interest in Mindanao, and he’s shared many anecdotes of that time with me, a couple of which relate to this idea of the mystical warrior– he’s a believer who is also an eye witness to this kind of Crusader:

Jeremy was walking the main drag of a small town in Lanao with a Muslim bodyguard from the MNLF and they were ambushed by a would-be Christian assassin– Jeremy explained the scenario in what seemed to be a very populated center of town– he hit the ground when he heard gunshots, and turned to see his Christian assailant empty a magazine of bullets into his bodyguard, literally blowing him away into a nearby vendor stand. After a moment of lying apparently dead, the Muslim bodyguard rose from the ground and approached the assassin who had left him for dead– he in turn emptied a magazine into the assassin, felling him. Incredibly, and Jeremy swears up and down on this point, the assassin then opened his eyes after being shot, scrambled to his feet and ran from the scene!

The other was an initiation ritual that he witnessed while living with a MNLF rebel unit- to prove their imperviousness to injury, an initiate put his bared arm out on a large table, surrounded by unit leaders. One of the members, armed with a bolo knife, would approach the initiate and with a mighty plunge, would strike him across the arm hard enough to spill mugs on the table– instead of a gaping wound or amputation, the arm would only the signs of a pressure line on the arm, you know that kind of white line and indentation that you would get if you would, say tie a rubber band around your arm when you were a kid. Nothing else. How this was possible, or how a human could prepare themself for this is still unknown to Jeremy, and me for that matter.

The show at Green Papaya Art Space space in Teacher’s Village, Quezon City opened last Wednesday to a great crowd from the Filipino Arts scene. I was really stoked to show at Green Papaya because it is another artist run gallery half way across the world, and it wasn’t surprising to find that these weirdos on the art scene are just like my homies back in Austin: humble, hospitible, and interested in contemporary art from a global perspective– I have to say, however, that Green Papaya is ahead of Okay Mountain in presenting TransMedia art to the unsuspecting art public of Manila.

The Artists are:

Heyd Fontenot and I barely knew each other before the trip began, but I just knew that he would be a great traveling companion– all of these thoughts have been confirmed since we’ve arrived. He just completed a whopping eighteen large paintings at his residency in Newfoundland, and brought at least four of them for the show here. His sultry portraits of friends in the Austin scene are equal parts portraiture, abstraction, and design.
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Louie Cordero’s, stuff, to me, is perfectly Filipino: dense, colorful, and beautifully grotesque– he is a butt-kicker to be sure, showing at Jonathan Levine Gallery in New York, Giant Robot in Los Angeles, and being one of the 13 young contemporary artists who were honored by the Cultural Center of the Philippines. As I start to blog, you might keep an eye on the list of these thirteen, because many of these artists form a tight knit clan that forms part of the contemporary scene in Manila.
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Mariano Ching is another of these thirteen, and before I came over I had no idea what his stuff would look like because of his minimal web presence. But what he brought was awesomely original and surprising– I knew when he brought his stuff in that we would have a BIG show with many looks and lots of ideas floating around. I need to get better photos of his smaller works, but below is one of the paintings he exhibited.
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I had brought an installation in a duffle bag with me (weight 26.7 pounds, according to the Amtrak scale) and nine small pieces– I had a ridiculous amount of work to do when i got here, so my first week was spent painting at Louie’s studio finishing paintings and hanging out with he and local rock/ art icon Romeo Lee

That’s all I have for the time being– gotta go tourist for awhile in the city– check back soon.

Wow, here we go with it– another travel blog– I’m happy to be here. Hope you guys will be happy reading it.

I’ve actually been in Manila for a week now, but because of the hectic scheduling I’ve subjected myself to this week (nobody can paint themself into a corner better than a painter), I have been up on scaffolding, stuffing booby pillows, painting tiny little half-circles and staring at a table almost my entire time here. Feels like home.

We have had a little time to go downtown to visit the carazay shopping district Divisoria (imagine miles of five and a half foot underground caverns made of tiny cheap lead painted toys from China), and eat some fantastic seafood and more– for the record, in the Philippines I have not been able to make vegetarianism work– it’s just too hard to find true vegetarian food given the work schedule I’ve had. Other than that, work work work until today. I’ve got to format the photos from Green Papaya gallery that I took at our opening last night, so bear with me until tomorrow.

Heyd and I have been staying in Quezon City, in a section called Cubao, which is close to Araneta Stadium, the venue for the famous “Thrilla in Manila” fight between Mohammed Ali and Joe Frazier in 1975. In fact, there is a mall next door to the arena that seems to memorialize the victor, calling it the “AliMall.” Had the decision gone the other way, the result would have been “FrazierMall” or even better, Mall of Frazier, which would bear a striking resemblence in title to the recently completed “Mall of Asia,” which I’ve only seen coming from the airport and it looks as big as a damn country. People in Manila are waaaay into their malls– it’s the a.c., you see– because even here now, in what they call the cool season, the humidity is punishing and the temperatures in the afternoon still get up into the mid-eighties. Tired people who look tired walk around aimlessly in these superdelux facilities with names like “Gateway” and “S.M.” and look at each other and eat bread that sometimes looks like it has carpet on it and ride the escalators up and down in a kind of mindless procession that Romero captured so awesomely in “Dawn of the Dead.”

But there I was, finding everything that I needed in the malls for my installation because you can find everything in the malls here, and it really does make sense to do it that because the bad traffic in Manila is hellish beyond any Western comprehension of bad traffic. Traffic signs are merely suggestions, the tricycle daredevils and cutoffs and sheer volume of vehicles in this city of 16 million is truely mindblowing and exhausting. But in all of this, I’ve finally figured out the way they get by– everyone constantly yields to one another in traffic, and nobody, except in a rare case of a major traffic light, feels like they have total right-of-way. Yes, it is less efficient, and makes the traffic more of a morass than it should be, but there’s something to this code of conduct that every Westerner could learn a lesson from– there is a more steady, measured flow to the way traffic moves, and unless you are at a standstill, people don’t seem to get as hoppin’ mad here as they do in the states. The white people sense of entitlement is missing. Filipinos share the road in the truest sense of the word.

Well, here’s the inaugural entry– more laters to y’all.

The L_M_N_L will be opening it’s doors on Saturday, July 28th to do an evening of improv music– check it out starting at 7pm– if you haven’t gotten a chance to check out the show, this is probably going to be the last chance you’ll get– it has a little of everything– collab paintings, sculpture, video, collage, a staircase on wheels, and most importantly, a re-ordering and recontextualizing of the space as it used to exist. This picture depicts the beginnings of a larger installation that I hope to complete later this year when I show in Manila. Click on the picture, and it will take you to the Gallery of other images showing this weekend, that is if we don’t sell them off the wall first.

AN EVENING OF IMPROVISATIONAL MUSIC WITH BROET AND GUESTS WITH VIDEO PROJECTIONS BY VIRTUAL LIFE MEDIA

Saturday, July 28th 8pm at the L_M_N_L art space
305b East 5th Street (east of San Jacinto)

For more on Broet, visit myspace.com/lesserbroet

I know, I know, why even have a blog if its, like, four months between posts?

Well, I’ve staying pretty busy like, with little shows here and there, and larger ones looming in the not so distant future. Currently, I just did a little project for Pump Project in Austin, a show called “Little Things,” and I also have a few works available like Mr.Sleepy God over there to your left at Arthouse’s “5×7″show here in Austin. Check it out soon - I think it goes down on June 3rd.

The most exciting thing that’s happened is that the Okay Mountain collaborative project that we’ve been rocking since November of last year is going international, with two shows happening in Mexico City this year, one currently at the Galería Enrique Guerrero and another in November 2007. This show was made possible by a connection from our wayward Egyptian buddy Basim Magdy, who was the last show at the Mountain. For proof of our artwork’s frequent flyer miles and further proof of a burgeoning international hipster monoculture, mira and click on the link that says pics

June should bring the months-in-the making new show at l_m_n_l gallery in downtown Austin that features a collaboration between myself, Lance McMahan, Bill Ivey, Dennis Hodges (he’s currently in the “Ketchup Loves Hotdog” show, and Enoch Rios, so keep your eyes peeled and your ears pricked up for that one. Did I just say that?